And When That Day Comes
by Nagia
Summary: We so often wish that the past would stay in the past. When a threat of war from the southern half of Wutai forces her into an arranged marriage, Yuffie finds herself wishing for a little more in typical Yuffie fashion: dangerously. Yuffentine.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**Notes:** Yes, I'm replacing the major chapters with the sections I broke them into. That's the main cause for the ridiculously unreadable length of half my chapters and the extremely slow update speed. It also has enabled me to get the first bit of what SHOULD have been chapter five out for you guys. Also, I screwed up with my numbering system. This is my vague attempt at correcting things.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Prologue**

_Winter, Year of Leviathan's Twentieth Scale_

_Island of Wu Tai --- City of Le Phe Tan_

Phe Tsen Shu does not fear. The city is ancient, the city is beautiful, the city is safe. He does not fear. There is nothing to fear.

He does not look around him. He is not wary, he is not anxious. He looks up at the sky, from which snowflakes fall. His father, Nao Hei, claims that snowflakes are the way Leviathan brushes sleep from his eyes. Therefore, each day of snowfall brings them that much closer to winter's end. When his father tells him this legend, his uncle, Mao Li Shu, merely laughs and says that Leviathan does not sleep.

Phe Tsen does not wonder which he should believe. He believes both. For a non-Wutaian, this would be impossible. But he understands the truth of life. Even if two statements seem to conflict, they can both be true. This is the truth of life.

It is this truth, this understanding that the world is infinite, that anything and everything is possible, that he trusts in most. He does not question why it is that he thinks no harm will come to him, if anything is possible.

Le Phe Tan is an awesome god. Surely Le Phe Tan will allow no harm to be done in the city devoted to him? This ancient city, this beautiful city, is safe. He is of the House of Shu, and he is safe. Always.

The House of Shu is an ancient House; it is the Great House of Le Phe Tan. This is the House that staged the Secession twenty years ago; this is the House that convinced House Kisaragi not to go to war. This is the House that has always gotten its way, because to anger the House of Shu is a dangerous thing indeed.

This trust, this confidence, is his greatest failure. It is also his greatest virtue.

When a stranger beckons him from the shadows, he goes. He goes happily, he goes willingly. He is a polite boy, a helpful boy. He is a respectful boy. He aids his elders without pause, without second thought, without regret.

The House of Shu has always been polite. When people naturally go out of their way to make you happy, why not be polite?

The thought of ignoring the stranger does not occur to Phe Tsen. Many days from now, his father will wish that it had.

Phe Tsen does not hesitate when he enters the alley. He bows lower than he should to the stranger, but that is just his way. Most elders accept this embarrassment graciously. He greets the stranger politely, even kindly.

The stranger does not bow back. The stranger does not return his greeting. Instead, the stranger gestures at him with a dark-coloured object. The stranger speaks a harsh tongue, with gutteral-sounding syllables.

Phe Tsen does not return home that night. He does not return home two weeks later. In fact, Phe Tseng will never return to the quaint tiered house he likes to call home.


	2. Chapter One

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter One**

_Summer, forty-three years later (Year of the Star that Did Not Fall)_

_Island of Wu Tai --- City of Le Phe Tan_

Mao Li Shu stared at the letter in his hands. He didn't quite know how to describe how he felt. The letter contained information he had wanted to know for well over forty years…

But it was also impossible. The boy they had lost, his nephew, could not be a day under fifty-eight.

Maybe this was his nephew's son. That was possible, was it not? People in his House often looked very much alike. Foreigners could not distinguish between them. Hell, that idiot Yu Fi Kisaragi girl had confused his son with his son's third cousin during her visit to his city some nine years ago.

On the other hand, Tsen Li and Li Tseng did look rather alike…

Mao Li looked once more at the photographs. One in black and white, one of the only four photographs of Phe Tseng Shu… One in colour, the _only_ extant photograph of Vincent Valentine.

Even without his reading glasses on, Mao Li could see the similarity. A blind old woman who confused people's names could see the similarity. A foreigner who thought all Wutaians looked alike could see the similarity. The similarity was there for all to see. It shouted "HA HA HA, LOOK AT US, WE'RE REALLY SIMILAR! BAH! SCRATCH SIMILAR, WE'RE $&IN' _IDENTICAL_!"

And then there were the checks. Made out in Sho Kisaragi's hand to one Alexander Gast, Private Investigator. And then there were the private investigator's reports, one of which stated that he had found Phe Tsen Shu working Shinra under the name Vincent Valentine.

And then there was the transcript, from twenty years earlier, of an interview with a captured murderer. The murderer claimed to have kidnapped a Wutaian boy from a large city in South Wutai and sold him to Gold Saucer. At some point after this, the criminal had kidnapped the boy again and sold him to Shinra.

Mao Li felt his blood pressure rise. His fists clenched on the paper.

This was an insult. Worse, this was an insult he could not endure. Godo Kisaragi would make reparations for his father's lies. His honour, the honour of his House, demanded it.

The failure to find his nephew was his single greatest shame. It had changed his city, his outlook on ruling. It was the shame that had ruled his life.

The shame that had killed his brother one crisp winter morning.

The shame that meant Mao Li's son had never heard Nao Hei's ridiculous legends. His son had never claimed to believe that Leviathan slept, and did not sleep, at the same time. His son had never walked the city without a guard.

His son had never enjoyed cool winter evenings. His son had never known Phe Tsen's wonder about snow. His son had never so much as thrown a snowball.

Tsen Li had also never swum in streams, or raked leaves from temple walks, or helped with the harvest.

His son had led a dreary life, thanks to Mao Li's failure. Thanks to Mao Li's determination to never lose another child dear to him.

Mao Li dipped a pen in ink and began to write a letter.


	3. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Two**

_Summer, Year of the Star that Did Not Fall_

_Island_ _of Wu Tai_ _--- City of Wutai_ _(formerly Da Cha O)_

"It's not happening, old man. It's not happening, it's not happening, it's not happening."

"Yuffie."

"Not happening. Not happening. Not happening. I'm not doing this, Godo. I'm not."

"Yuffie."

"Just make the apology."

"I will do no such thing. My father never knew about this. We even offered to help, but nobody ever found anything. My father does not deserve to have his name dishonoured in such a manner."

"Hey, hey, hey! Your dad's dead! I'm alive. I think _I_ deserve a little more consideration, here!"

She couldn't do this. She hadn't even turned eighteen yet! Wasn't she supposed to travel the world, accomplish something, maybe even lose a couple thousand Gil in Gold Saucer before she did this?

"It's not fair."

"Your mother's death wasn't fair. Life is rarely fair, Yuffie."

"This is really shitty."

"Yes, I know."

"Let me go to Gold Saucer before you make me do this. Please?"

"No."

"One last materia quest."

"No."

"Daddy… Please don't make me do this."

"Butterfly."

And that was all he had to say. That stupid pet name. Except it wasn't a pet name. That was the name he called her when he had something awful for her to do. That was the name he called her when he was going to do anything to make her do that awful something.

Yuffie almost cried. Not from any real sadness, though. She blinked back tears of frustration. For an instant, she almost hated her mother for passing on the need to cry when extremely frustrated.

"Daddy, please don't make me do this. I'm not even eighteen! I'm supposed to, you know, live a little!"

"Da Chao demands sacrifice. Be worthy of the Pagoda, Yuffie."

"Da Chao hates me."

"Da Chao doesn't know you exist. The Six won't know you; much less hate you, until you sacrifice."

"Dad…"

"Yuffie, you can either sign the scroll yourself, or I can rewrite it and sign it. You don't want me to rewrite that, Yuffie. I'll make it quite clear that I am handing off a useless daughter."

So. Even after she'd saved the world, defeated the man who'd killed her mother, found scales of Leviathan, mastered All Creation, and spent four years finding materia for him… She was still just a tool.

She had no more right to live her own life than a hammer, and no more right to an opinion than a nail.

The vicious anger, the hatred of him that she'd somehow managed to push away, to lock out of sight, returned. And with it came that wailing inside her, that puppy-like need for him to pet her, to love her, to tell her she'd done well.

"Godo…"

"I mean this, Yu Fi. You can either give yourself up with pride and honour, or I can give away something that has no worth to me."

_Nothing._ _Nothing. Nothing. I'm nothing I'm nothing I'm nothing I'm nothing_.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to kick him in the shins, she wanted to kill him, she wanted to kill all of the Mighty Gods. She wanted to run far, far away screaming, _You'll_ _never take me alive, coppers!_

"I hate you."

"I know."

_I hate you I love you I hate you I love you I hate you I love you but I HATE YOU. I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you. I love you I love you I love you I love you. Why can't you love me?_

"Give me the damn pen."

He gave her the pen. She signed her agreement. The beautiful characters, Kisaragi Yu Fi spelled out her doom, just as a spider's web spelled death for the flies.

Her name, Yu Fi, was an old poetic word for butterfly. It had been her mother's idea, or so Godo claimed. With Godo, you could never be sure if what you were getting was truth or lie.

Yuffie hated the name, always had. She'd slurred the two syllables together from the moment she could say her own name. Nobody ever guessed that her name described a fragile, beautiful creature whose beauty rubbed away in the rain.


	4. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again  
—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Three**

_Two Weeks Later_

_City of Kalm_ _--- Final Heaven Bar_

Friday night was Ladies' Night. Ladies' Night was one of her most profitable events. Women came from all over town for the chance to get half-off on drinks and pick the television channel.

This was only the eighth Ladies' Night of the summer, and Tifa had already begun to regret that last part of the event. At least men usually chose sports or news. Tifa could deal with sports or news. It turned out, however, that she couldn't deal with Entertainment Tonight. Tifa had gathered within minutes that Entertainment Tonight consisted of celebrity gossip.

What she had not gathered in a year was that AVALANCHE members were celebrities.

She also hadn't known she was getting married. But according to Entertainment Tonight, the "youngest AVALANCHE member was getting married."

She wasn't actually the youngest, of course. But Yuffie obviously wasn't going to be getting married (she wasn't even legal yet!), and Red was second-oldest, as the media counted. So that left Tifa.

The entire thing had put her in a daze. Who on earth had given them _that_ faulty information? She ought to call them and tell them that she was _not_ getting married, thank you very much.

"Um? What the hell does 'the sun will shine soon' mean? It's night."

"It's a Wutaian proverb. Means that your life will improve soon."

"Uh… My life is great, thanks. I just told you: I got a raise, my girlfriend came back to me, and my mother's cancer is in remission."

"I'm sorry…."

"You know, normally people say 'congratulations' to things like that."

"I was apologizing for being inattentive. Now shut up, I need to listen to this."

Entertainment Tonight came back on. Vapid Woman A announced, "Yuffie Kisaragi held a press conference this morning, informing the world of her decision to marry. She really was quite the wit, telling reporters that she had no idea when the wedding was, and wouldn't say when, even if she knew. At this point, Lord Godo explained that Yuffie and Tsen Li hadn't yet decided on a date, but Tsen Li and some of his family would be coming up in a few weeks to discuss that."

Vapid Woman B interjected, "When asked what AVALANCHE thought of her decision, Yuffie showed that vivacious spirit again, saying that she didn't know and didn't care, as it was _her_ life she was 'throwing away'."

Both vapid women laughed.

"Lord Godo promised to inform the world of the date, once Yuffie and Tsen Li had decided on one," said VW A.

"Did you know that this meeting will be the first time Yuffie and Tsen Li have ever met?"

"No, I didn't. What, were they pen pals?"

"No! Apparently, arranged marriages are common in Wutai."

Both women laughed at this, making stupid, vapid joke after stupid, vapid joke.

"OH MY GOD, YUFFIE'S GETTING MARRIED!" was the first thing Tifa could say. After that, she managed to grit out, "I AM CALLING CLOUD. AND WE ARE ALL HAVING **WORDS.**"


	5. Chapter Four

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Four**

_One Week Later_

_Gold Saucer --- WILD ACE'S DEUCES WILD CASINO_

Even after talking to the floor manager, Cloud still had a hell of a time finding Vincent. Then again, Vincent actually looked nondescript without the red bandana, the red cloak, and his hair all scraggly and hanging to the middle of his back. Not even the claw called attention to him.

Cloud found him eventually, though. Even if it took him a moment to recognize the man without the trademark red or the long hair, and wearing a casino uniform and _nametag_.

Vincent was dealing blackjack one-handed, carrying on conversation with the people at his table.

Cloud stared. He tried to think of a way to announce, _Hi, it's Cloud. We kind of need you_.

Instead, he managed to announce, _Hi, it's Cloud. I'm still an idiot_.

"Vincent… You cut your hair!"

Vincent only looked up for a minute. "If you would like to join the game, you will have to wait."

"Uh, yeah. Okay."

Vincent was working in _Gold Saucer_. This was hilarious! This was dumbfounding! This was amazing! This was _whoah_-worthy. This was more than just _whoah_-worthy!

This was…. He had no idea what this was. It was insane.

A little Wutaian lady won the round. She took her winnings graciously and left the game, clearing space for Cloud.

"Are you joining?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. Deal me in."

Cloud placed his bet. Vincent dealt the cards.

Cloud studied his hand. He hated playing in casinos. Not only did you lose money, but it just wasn't as fun as playing at home. Besides, he wouldn't feel right talking to Vincent until it was his turn.

And he had three turns to wait out.

The man who went before Cloud managed a five card Charlie. Cloud blinked when the man promptly hit.

Most dealers (well, maybe not casino dealers) would have warned the man not to hit, would have told him that he had a win.

Vincent didn't do either of these things. He just dealt the man the card that sent him over.

"Bust," the man said. He sounded disappointed.

"How can you possibly be surprised?" One of the other players chided. "You had a five hit win! And you hit again! You idiot…"

"Play nice, children." And that was all Vincent said before he turned to Cloud.

"Hit me," Cloud said.

Vincent gave him a card.

"I heard some interesting news."

"Hit or stay?"

"Listen to this, Vince."

"Hit or stay?"

"You need to hear this."

"Hit. Or. Stay."

"I'm still in the game?"

Vincent gave him a death glare.

"Okay, fine." Cloud looked at the cards. "But not until you hear this."

"Fine. Tell me."

"Yuffie's getting married."

Cloud hated fifteen. He never knew whether he wanted to hit or stay on fifteen. Nobody else had gotten a six, but nobody else had gotten a ten, either.

"Hit me."

"Yuffie's getting married," Vincent said. "Is this some sort of joke?"

"If it were a joke, she'd be telling you herself, and then saying 'Ha-ha! Made you blink!'"

"She's only what? Sixteen?"

"Seventeen. Arranged marriage, with her father's full approval. I hear that's legal in Wutai."

"It is. Barely."

"How much you want to bet she's getting rid of whatever law makes it possible, when she… whatevers the Pagoda?"

"Nothing. Not even she would dare."

"Dare?"

"It was the law that created the Pagoda in Da Cha O... The first ruler of Da Cha O was a woman. It was an arranged marriage."

"Da Cha O?"

"The City of Wutai."

"Er, the Lord of Wutai doesn't control just Wutai?"

"He controls the northern half of Wutai. The southern half of the island is a separate Kingdom, and has been for some eighty years."

Huh. This was better than he'd thought. If Vincent knew this much about Wutai's history, it was a safe bet he knew the language.

And they might just wind up _not_ all getting kicked out of an inn onto their asses by a little old lady.

"You speak Wutaian, don't you?"

"Yes, of course. I was born there."

"…"

Vincent was Wutaian? That explained why he and Yuffie hadn't gotten along, then. Yuffie was everything that Wutaian women weren't supposed to be. Loud. Brash. Wilful.

"Tifa wants to go 'talk' with her. You should come with us."

"I don't think that would be wise."

"Vince, Yuffie's throwing her life away at the age of seventeen. Tifa doesn't speak Wutaian, and my Wutaian gets me into insane trouble."

"I still doubt the wisdom of this idea."

"I think it's a _great_ idea. Can you really let her throw her life away without trying to talk her out of it?"

Vincent glared.


	6. Chapter Five

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Five**

_One Week Later_

_Island_ _of Wu Tai_ _--- City of Wutai_ _(formerly Da Cha O)_

Yuffie forced a smile onto her face as the car rolled up to the gates of her city. From there, they would walk. Wutai's streets couldn't handle motored traffic. It filled her with a vicious sort of glee that her fiancé would walk to her palace… And she would ride a motorcycle.

Yuffie could feel people watching her. She'd gotten very good at knowing when something was watching her.

She looked backwards. There, standing in plain view, was a man with a camera and an insanely long lens.

She grinned cheekily and held out her fingers in a V shape. The paparazzi hated it when she did that. Make it clear that you know they're there, that they didn't catch you unawares, and it ruins all their fun.

But this _was_ starting to get annoying. People randomly popping up and taking pictures of her every five minutes... It felt weird. The modern media had never cared about Wutai before. Wutai was just some dinky tourist trap.

And now they cared. Because she was part of AVALANCHE, and happened to be the future ruler of a tiny country.

"Come on, come _on_, what are you, five hundred years old?" She mumbled to the family departing the car. "It shouldn't take this long, dang it!"

It turned out that her fiancé's old man, Mao Li, was in his eighties. She felt slightly sorry for her ill thoughts when it became clear that he had trouble walking, but still…

Ha-ha, Tsen Li was going to have to _walk_. And she would ride a motorcycle.

Yuffie adjusted the detachable sleeves. She had agreed to wear a nicer kimono.

She'd never agreed not to wear a mourning one.

Godo was going to be so _pissed_.

* * *

Tsen Li blinked at the sight of the young woman moving towards them. She was prettier than he'd expected her to be, but not as pretty as his father had told him she'd be.

"Father? Is that her?"

"I wonder if she killed Godo," his father replied.

It was then that Tsen Li noticed that the woman was wearing a black kimono. The silk trims had spider-web patterned eyelet.

Detachable sleeves. Dark colours. Sober trim. It was a mourning kimono.

"Kisaragi Yu Fi," Tsen said. He offered her a bow, lower than he should have, probably, but he was beyond caring.

He was going to be _polite_, damn it. He was going to act love-stricken for those idiotic foreign cameras, and then when they got to the palace, he was going to tell her he hadn't the slightest interest in her. He would tell her that the minute they were married, he would go home and announce his claim on his Intended. She could do whatever she liked.

"Shu Tsen Li."

"It is a pleasure," he said.

"Of course. Charmed. Enchanted. Utterly _thrilled_ to meet you."

She didn't sound thrilled. She sounded like she was trying to scream _Die, die, die_ and wasn't quite getting it right.

"Show me around your city."

"I'll help you put your bags in the cart, and then I'll show you back to the palace."

"The palace can't be that hard to find, girl."

His father just _had_ to ruin polite conversation, didn't he?

"I'm an old man. I'll just ride in the cart back to the palace… Why don't you show my son around your city?"

Yu Fi gave his father a predatory grin. She turned to him and pointed at the street beneath him. "Road." She pointed to Da Chao. "Da Chao." She pointed at something he couldn't see. "Business district."

And then she laughed. "You've seen Wutai. Maybe, if you're nice enough, I'll show you the cemetery."

"You don't seem to like your city much."

"I've never seen it. When I was a child, I never left the Academy. When I graduated the Academy, my father let me stay two months in my house before he sent me out of the country. This is the longest I've stayed here since I was twelve."

Tsen Li nodded. "I don't see much of Le Phe Tan. For entirely different reasons, though… Forty years ago, somebody kidnapped the then-heir to the Pagoda. They never found him. I've never been anywhere without a guard before."

She laughed again. "You're still not."

"What? I don't see them…"

"You're looking at her."

"Oh."

"Yeah. My father pretty well never wants to see me around. I look too much like my mother, or something."

"I see."

A world where his father wouldn't look at him? Constantly having a guard detail _sucked_, but that would suck worse.

How had she stood it? Why wasn't she insane or wanting to kill him or something?

Yu Fi bowed to his father. "Your son's safety in my presence is assured. So long as he is with me, nothing will harm him."

And then a group of foreigners rushed into the city. Two blond men and a brunette.

"Yuffie," the brunette gasped in the Midgarian tongue. "Yuffie, you aren't really doing this, are you?"

Yu Fi sighed. "My apologies, Tsen Li. This is Tifa Lockheart of Midgar. With her are Cloud Strife and Cid Highwind."

"Yuffie, you $&in' idiot! The hell you think you're doin'?"

Yu Fi switched to Midgarian. "I'm getting married, Cid. Cid, Cloud, Tifa? Meet Tsen Li Shu, of Le Phe Tan. Meet also his father, Lord Mao Li Shu."

"Yuffie, we need to talk."

"If you're going to try and talk me out of it, don't bother."

"An audience, Yuffie. Please." This came from the younger blond. Tsen Li recognized him from the newspapers— this was Cloud Strife, of AVALANCHE.

"Fine. Later. Right now, I have to help them with their luggage and get them to the palace."

But Cloud only grinned. "We'll help you with that."

"Do what you want."

Cloud turned to Mao Li. In awkward, but passable, Wutaian, he said, "May I help you with your bags?"

Well, sort of. Tsen Li figured it was something like that. He saw Yu Fi's eyebrow twitch. He saw his father's eyebrow twitch. He felt his throat spasm as he fought hard to keep from laughing at his father's attempts to puzzle out the man's Wutaian.

"He wants to help with the luggage, father. I think," Tsen Li offered.

"By all means." And his father began to order the poor fool around like a dog.

_Poor hero_, Tsen Li thought to himself. _He should never have made the offer. Father would never treat Yu Fi like that, but foreigners…_


	7. Chapter Six

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Six**

_City of Wutai_ _(formerly Da Ch O) --- Palace_

"They're here!" Yuffie announced as soon as the motorcycle came to a halt and she'd kicked out the kickstand.

Behind her, Tsen Li made puke sounds.

"Remember the rules, Tsen Li? Hold on tight, don't puke on the bike?"

"I'm not vomiting."

"You sure sound like it."

The puke sounds became more distinctive.

"…Not on the bike, anyway."

"I am never walking on that side of the road again. Ever. Just so you know."

"Whatever you like. After we're married, I intend to return to Le Phe Tan and announce my claim on my Intended."

Yuffie blinked. "Is that even possible?"

"I never said I was going to marry her."

"So, more like a permanent mistress sort of thing?"

Tsen Li visibly bristled at the term. He obviously didn't like thinking that claiming his Intended would be infidelity.

What a jerk. And her father had said that members of the House of Shu were unselfish and polite.

Well, if that wasn't just about the biggest crock of shit he'd ever given her, she'd eat Vincent's cloak.

The cart pulled up in front of the palace. The driver helped Mao Li out of the cart and onto the ground.

Mao Li leaned heavily on his cane.

Yuffie bowed. "Please, let me show you to your rooms…"

Mao Li and Tsen Li followed her.

…

"Yuffie, just listen to me. Please."

"You don't have anything important to say. I'm sorry Cloud, but I've made this decision. It isn't your place to second-guess me."

Tifa glared at her as she held her teacup in both hands. Cid, sitting next to her, held his teacup in one hand and glared at the tea.

It probably didn't look like Shera's tea. And it probably didn't smell or taste like Shera's tea.

"Come on, Yuffie. We're your friends. What could it hurt to listen to us?"

"I gave my word, Cloud. I don't have a choice in the matter, not anymore." She managed not to add, _Not_ _that I ever did, anyway._

"Yuffie. Come on. Think about it. You're seventeen. This guy's, what, nineteen? You've never met him before."

"I met him when I was eight. I confused him with his third cousin."

"You've met him _once_ before. Big whoop. That's like me marrying Scarlet."

Yuffie sighed. How was she supposed to explain that South Wutai was blackmailing her and her father? That they were threatening war? How did you say something like that, without coming out and saying it?

_Damn my honour_, she thought to herself. _Damn, damn, damn._

No. Damn her father's honour. It had been her father's honour that had put her in this position. Apologize, or make Wutai a vassal state.

That son of a bitch. He was determined to ruin Wutai, wasn't he? That stupid, selfish bastard. First turning it into some tourist town with associated villages. And now… And now…

Leviathan above and below, she didn't even want to think about it. She desperately wished that this was a dream from which she could wake up. She wanted so badly for this to just all be over.

That he would _dare_ choose to make Wutai a vassal state, the puppet of a nation that had been under Kisaragi rule not a century before…

In those two weeks, she had begun to hate her father as she'd never hated him before. In those two weeks, she had spent countless hours plotting his demise. His vicious, horrible, painful, embarrassing demise. His vicious, horrible, painful, embarrassing demise that no one could trace back to her in any way.

After all, if she killed him and ascended the Pagoda, she could so easily get out of this. So easily. She would give the apology, hand over her PHS, and get on with her life. Problem solved.

Oops. Tifa had been talking, and she hadn't been listening.

"…Yuffie, you just aren't ready to settle down. I know it, you know it… Why are you doing this to yourself? I mean, is it some sort of tradition? You _always_ have a choice. Always."

_Yeah_, Yuffie thought. _I've got a whole _host _of other choices, Tifa. But you know what they are? They're all just different ways of committing suicide. So $& you._

"Tifa, please. Stop. This was my decision. Stop trying to pin all the blame on Godo," _Even though he deserves every bit of it_, "and stop trying to convince me to go back on my word."

"Are you sure?" Cid asked. "This ain't some kind of blackmail thing, right?"

_Gawd, who knew Cid was smart?_

Uh-oh. Territory she couldn't tell them about. They'd start freaking out.

"No, it isn't. And if you keep on like this, I'm going to have to ask all of you to leave Wutai."

Cloud stood. For a foreigner, he wasn't very tall, but he still managed to tower over her.

Yuffie refused to feel intimidated.

"We're not leaving," Cloud said. His voice and posture gave a clear message.

She felt her chin lift. That Cloud, of all people, was trying to threaten her! Cloud had never scared her. Not even when she'd betrayed him and stolen his Materia.

She met his eyes, stared at him, glared at him. She made her voice as cold as she possibly could.

She didn't want to say this.

"Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockheart, Cid Highwind: you are no longer welcome in Wutai. Da Chao-statue closes his eyes at the sight of you. Heavenly City Da Cha O bars her gate."

And then she called for Division Six. The nine ninja, clad in the colours of House Kisaragi, bowed so low their heads touched the floor as they slipped into her room.

"Remove these foreigners from Heaven," Yuffie told them.

Cloud never stood a chance. He'd given up the Ultima Weapon as part of receiving an audience. Cid hadn't bothered to bring the Venus Gospel. And Tifa, lovely Tifa, who used her fists as her weapons, made the worst mistake possible.

She failed to understand the intensity of her situation.

Nine fully trained, extremely competent ninja against two unarmed men and a woman who was reluctant to hurt them.

It wasn't even a contest.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, and other things not found in FF7. I also own the concept of Heavenly City Da Cha O, the bastardization of the name Da Chao into Da Cha O, and the concept of the Wild Ace's Deuce's Wild Casino. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Seven**

_Two Hours Later_

_Aboard the Highwind_

"Damn, how long did it take them to get those gates closed?" Cid asked, looking at the gates.

Vincent didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. Cid had watched with he and Cloud as the guardsmen of Da Cha O closed the city gates.

Just what had Cloud _said_? He wondered. Prompting such a vividly negative reaction from a society that was highly tolerant of the mistakes foreigners made took work. He couldn't think of a single thing that would have prompted Mao Li to close the gates of Le Phe Tan.

Of course, Mao Li was probably a lot bitterer, now.

"Cloud, does this usually happen when you attempt Wutaian?"

"This had nothing to do with my Wutaian," Cloud snapped. "Yuffie got pissed at us and kept telling us it wasn't any of our business. She actually said she didn't have a choice. I can't believe it."

Vincent looked over at the still-unconscious Tifa. "Did Yuffie do that?"

"No. It was..." Cloud made a mockery of the syllables.

Really, no wonder his Wutaian did him more harm than good. If Cloud couldn't say something as simple as _Division Six_, Vincent shuddered (well, not really. But he would have shuddered, if he didn't loathe physical reactions to emotion) to think what he might do to a simple request for a night in an inn.

Wait. Division Six?

What had they _done_?

"Cloud… What did you _do_?"

"I don't know. I have no idea why she got so mad at us. We were just trying to help!"

"It may be that she has set herself on this, Cloud. It would seem that we cannot convince her."

"Okay. So you give up, too. Well, I'm not giving up on her. I'm going to bring her back to her senses, damnit!"

It wasn't that he'd given up on her. It was that he knew how stubborn she was. After all, he'd spent most of his time in AVALANCHE with her. Cloud had taken Cid and Tifa along with him on almost every mission, leaving Barrett, Aeris, and Cait Sith as the auxiliary party, with he, Yuffie and Nanaki as the third party. Nanaki had joined Barrett and Cait Sith after Aeris' death.

Vincent had spent almost his entire time with AVALANCHE in Yuffie's company. He knew her best out of all of them, probably.

He knew what little good Cloud was going to do.

"Cloud, if she has closed Wutai's gates because of you, do you honestly think she is going to listen to anything you have to say?"

Cloud glared.

"I'm going to see if I can't gain entrance to the city."

"And if she's not going to listen to me, what makes you think she'll listen to you?"

"_I_ will be the listening one, Cloud."

Cloud continued to glare


	9. Chapter Eight

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer:** I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the concept of materia beading, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of Da Chao into Da Cha O, the Lady Cho Lin Chang, and other things not found in FF7. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Eight**

_Summer, Year of the Star that Did Not Fall_

_Island_ _of Wu Tai_ _--- City of Wutai_ _(formerly Da Cha O)_

"Are you sure you're Wutaian?" The guard watched him warily.

"My name is Phe Tsen. I'm from Le Phe Tan," Vincent assured him. He didn't say, _I would think that's something you have to know, like your name._

Speaking Wutaian flawlessly certainly helped convince the guard. The man let him pass through with minimal inspection. He didn't even make any remarks about Vincent's claw, or red eyes.

Vincent noticed the man signalling someone as he walked away. He made sure not to make the small mirror in his left hand obvious. Such tricks were useful. It would be a shame if he alerted a city full of potential enemies to them.

He continued to watch the spaces behind him with the mirror as he headed towards the business district.

Three faces behind him did not change. Their distances changed. Sometimes they were a little farther away, sometimes they were very close. But they themselves continued to follow him.

They were all of them children.

They had children tailing him. Vincent wasn't sure if this was an act of genius or desperation. Few people would suspect children of ill intent... But children were also clumsier and more likely to be found.

He began to detour onto random side streets. He stopped caring which direction he turned, where he was going, so long as he was moving in the direction of sparsely populated areas.

He got his wish. His random turns had taken him to a tiny alley, a dead end.

"I know you're there," he told them calmly.

The one who spoke was a mere boy, _perhaps_ fifteen, if Vincent wanted to deceive himself. "You knew we were here, so you got yourself lost where no-one's going to miss you?"

"I'm not lost." _Geographically confused, perhaps._

The next one to speak was a girl. "That's right. You're not lost; you're just temporarily misplaced on the Planet."

"They just don't raise women the way they used to, do they? You have terrible manners. You shouldn't speak in such a fashion to your elders."

"Shut up!"

"Humph. None of my female cousins ever said _shut up_. My uncle would have slapped them if they had."

"I'm not a bad person!"

"I never said you were a bad person. I said you had no manners."

"Whatever."

Yet another thing none of the women in his time would have ever said. Just how much had Wutai _changed_? Or was this one of the fundamental differences between northern and southern Wutai?

"What do you want of me?"

"We're just keeping an eye on you. Sho Tzu says he thinks you're some kinda threat. Mao Li wants to see if you're really who he thinks you are. And Future-Lady Kisaragi says to make sure you don't go near the palace."

Vincent said nothing. Instead he looked at the mouth of the alley. It would be a simple task to move past them. He could easily disable them if they attempted to stop him.

And then he would find Yuffie. He needed to hear her reasoning behind this. Not wanted to hear it.

_Needed_.

The children were indeed easy to move past. None of them were ready for him, when he moved. As he ran, his mind flashed towards the information they had just given him. Three children, three people watching him. Why were the children working together? _Were_ they, in fact, working together?

Who was Sho Tzu?

He had too many questions and answers for none of them. This did not make a pretty picture for him.

He reached the palace with little trouble. His unnatural speed made it impossible for the children to keep up.

Had they not threatened him, he would have felt sorry for them.

The palace stretched up before him, six tiers of the Kisaragi colours, shadowy against the sunset. The three children, he knew, would be three quarters of the way between here and the alley by now.

Well. He would just have to make this visit a swift one, wouldn't he? Yes. He needed to be quick about this.

So why was it that it wasn't until the sun fell beneath the horizon that he approached the palace?


	10. Chapter Nine

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer:** I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the concept of materia beading, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of Da Chao into Da Cha O, the Lady Cho Lin Chang, and other things not found in FF7. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Nine**

_Summer, Year of the Star that Did Not Fall_

_City of Wutai_ _(formerly Da Cha O) --- Palace_

"May I inquire as to the object that so holds your attention, father?"

Yuffie winced at the chill she heard in Tsen Li's voice. She hated her father, but she would never speak to him so coldly. Better to make her reasons for hating him clear, than make the people around him suffer.

"They are just some old photographs, son. I am sure I showed them to you before. They would not interest you." Mao Li responded with the same chill. Yuffie repressed a shudder at the thought of that sort of relationship.

"Oh," Tsen Li said. "_Those_ photographs. Do you take them with you everywhere?"

The derisive note in his voice did nothing to improve her opinion of Tsen Li. How could somebody talk to his father like that? Not having any respect for a man was one thing, but being openly contemptuous and derisive?

Chekhov would have hit her so hard she'd given her a concussion if she'd ever shown open contempt to Godo. Disrespect? Disagreement? Criticism? So long as she showed them in private, all fine. But outright contempt? Definitely not fine, public or private.

"Yes, boy, I do. When you come to be my age, you too, will have something of the dead that you treasure."

"But he's not dead," Tsen Li hissed. "That's why we're here. That's why we're doing this."

"Even if this man really _is_ him, my nephew is long dead."

And then, all of a sudden, it clicked. Every last little piece fell into place in her mind, like the scattered, broken beads of her mother's bangle forming a pattern.

"I understand," Yuffie said. Her voice came out sounding rushed, harried.

Sudden.

"Something of Lady Cho's?"

"You could say that," Yuffie replied.

Her gaze slipped to her left arm, where her mother had worn her bangle.

* * *

_Late Summer, The Final Year of The War_

_City of Da Cha O --- Palace_

**"I _can_ count to a hundred!" Yu Fi says to the dark-haired one.**

**"Really?** **I haven't heard you count to much more than thirty."**

**"Thirty-one-thirty-two-thirty-three-thirty-four..."**

**"Ah, but can you count in Midgarian?"**

**"...Fur-dee-wun, fur-dee-too, fur-dee-fwee, fur-dee-for..."**

**"Zack, you have created a monster." This comes from the tall one with the hair like... like...**

**She doesn't know what his hair looks like. It's very light, almost white. She has never seen hair like this.**

**And he has green eyes. They glow a little. Well, they glow a _lot_. It's weird. She's never seen anybody who looks like him.**

**The dark haired one gives the green-eyed one a smile, like he's saying _sorry_. "Oops?"**

**"...fur-dee-fie, fur-dee-sex, fur-dee-sef-en, fur-dee-hate..."**

**The dark haired one blinks. "So you _can_ count in Midgarian."**

**"A little," she says. "Fur-dee-nine, Fif-tee! Fiftee-wun—"**

**"—You forgot forty."**

**"Oops?"**

**The dark haired one (she thinks the light one called him Zack) bends down and hands her a glowing stick.**

**"What's this?" She asks.**

**"It's a Mako stick. The kids in Midgar like to play with them."  
**

**"What do they use it for? Throwing practice?"**

**"Well, little Lady, I don't know. I guess that depends on what throwing practice is."**

**She laughs. "I'll show you." She jumps onto a rug, making an amazingly heavy thud sound for such a small child. And then, in a high-pitched wail that sounds exactly like any injured child she has ever heard, she cries, "GOOOORKY, I SKINNED MY KNEE!"**

**The man** **named Gorky** **comes running. She whips out the Mako stick and throws it.**

**It hits him in the forehead.**

**Her mother turns around, from her conversation with the light one. "Gorky, you need to stop falling for that one. Yuffie hasn't skinned her knees since she stopped taking naps. And if she has, she certainly stopped _wailing_ about it when she stopped taking naps."**

**"My apologies, Lady Cho."**

**"There is no need to apologise, Gorky. Just stop falling for it."**

**"Yes, Lady Cho."**

**Yu Fi looks up at Zack, grinning mischievously. "That's throwing practice."**

**"I see," says Zack, smiling. "Well, little Lady, why don't you run along now and find somebody else to throw that stick at?"**

**Yu Fi nods.**

**Moments later, the stick hits the white-haired one in the back of the head.**

**"So sorry, General Sephiroth," Lady Cho says. "My daughter—"**

**"—Is a child. Children are children. They, without malice, throw things at those they fear."**

**"That was not what I was going to say. I was going to say that my daughter cannot be trusted with any form of throwing weapon in hand. She uses them on everyone. Her father has a bruise on the back of his head."**

**"...oh."**

* * *

"Yu Fi?" Mao Li asked.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong. If you will excuse me..." And with that, she stood. "I have something I need to tend."

"You don't carry it with you everywhere, do you?"

"I haven't been able to. Not yet. I need to get it."

And she left. Her slippers carried her soundlessly from the room. She moved through the halls as if sliding on some dark river, coiling silently. The shadows actually seemed to have a current.

The thought of the current made her think of the Watery Gates, the Gates of Life and Death. The wheel of water that controlled all. And thinking about the Watery Gates made her think of her home's wild, ridiculous legends.

Not all of them were about Leviathan. They had a few ridiculous ones about Da Chao, too. Like that one about the Statue.

And as she walked, no, let the night carry her, the plan began to form in her mind.

Worthy leaders didn't feel pain at the prospect of being sold for their countries, right? If they wanted to run away, then wouldn't be worthy. Right?

The shadow current didn't answer her. She ignored its silence.

So, if she could somehow make herself worthy... Then this wouldn't bother her as much, right? And hell, maybe this wouldn't even have to happen. If she was worthy, she could think of a way out of it.

She stopped for a moment. The shadow current rushed past her, wind blowing bits of the dirt road with it. She firmed her resolve.

She decided.

The current carried her all the way to Chekhov's house. It carried her along the twisting path up Chekhov's front walk, past the high threshold, through the house designed in perfect accordance with Feng Shuei.

Feng Shuei and the Yi Jing... The two things that both North and South Wutai held in common.

"Yuffie?" Chekhov looked startled that Yuffie had entered her home without permission.

_Outside of Wutai, they call this breaking and entering._

"I've come for my mother's things," Yuffie told her.

She marvelled at how quiet her voice sounded. She would never have thought herself capable of sounding so... Gentle. Demure. Normal.

"Why do you need them?"

"I'd like to own them before I die, old woman."

"What are you talking about?"

"Sometime within the next three days... I'm going to do something. Something dangerous. No, don't worry, nothing dumber than anything else I've done, but... Dangerous."

"Yuffie, what are you thinking of doing?"

"Not telling. Just... may I have my mother's things?"

"Well, you've turned seventeen. I suppose it's time." Chekhov sighed. "Let me finish my tea, and I'll show you where they are."

"Thank you. This means a lot to me."

_And could well save my life_, Yuffie thought but did not say.

Yuffie sat and waited for the old woman to finish her tea. Chekhov probably took her time for expressly that reason: to make Yuffie wait. To study her, to see why Yuffie wanted these things. To see if Yuffie was nervous.

Had she been a little younger, she would have offered to join the old woman. But now, she simply sat and waited. It was no longer her place.

Chekhov set her tea bowl on the table. The porcelain made a light _clink_. "Are you ready?"

Yuffie nodded.

"Is there a specific thing you want?" Chekhov asked as she led her through her house.

"I'd like to see my mother's bangles..."

"She had just the one. You _know_ that was the way of her family."

"But didn't he, didn't _I_ ruin it? I'm sure he— I— did. So she must have had another."

Chekhov threw back her head and laughed. She laughed and laughed, until Yuffie had to help her stay standing up. Yuffie didn't ask what the old woman thought was so funny.

It wasn't her place, anymore.

And then they arrived in the tiny room. Yuffie looked closely at it, but could glean only the vague impression of a room ruled by shadow currents. In one corner sat a chest of drawers and she thought she could see a pallet in the other corner.

Chekhov went over to the chest of drawers. "Yuffie, cast Fire1 on the candles, hm?"

"I'm not wearing my All materia."

"Then cast it on the individual candles."

Yuffie, grumbling at how long this was going to take, obeyed. Not that it took half as long as she'd thought it would. There weren't very many candles.

Yellow paper on the walls, green woven rugs from South Wutai on the floor. Shurikens, large and small, hung everywhere— suspended from frames that hung from the ceiling, like sun-catchers or the mobiles you hung over baby's cribs.

She began to recognize the room.

"I'm afraid you've been living a bit of a lie, Yuffie. You never moved into your mother's house. You moved into my house." Chekhov sighed. "If you like, I'll move out just as soon as I can. If you're going to claim her bangle, you might as well claim her property."

"That won't be necessary. For now." _If I survive, though, I'm kicking your ass to the curb_.

Chekhov opened one of the drawers. She took out random boxes and set them on the top of the dresser. After going through several boxes, Chekhov seemed to find what she was looking for.

"This is the one, I think." And Chekhov brought the box over to her. Wizened, arthritic hands pressed the box into Yuffie's hands. "This was your mother's, and her mother's before that, and _her_ mother's before that. It goes all the way back to your grandmother's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother's grandmother."

"From mother to daughter to daughter," Yuffie whispered. "Beaded by our own hands, Mastered by our own strength."

"Blessed be Leviathan, who opens the gates of our birth and welcomes us in death."

And Yuffie opened the box, remembering the Fire3 spell that had surely melted the bangle beyond recognition. Though Wutaian materia beading was known to be incredibly hardy, surely a Fire3 spell from Sephiroth would be more than even the most powerful beaded bangle could withstand?

What she found, however, was not a charred and twisted bangle. No remains of her mother's flesh clung to it. It had not blackened, it had not contorted.

Not a single bead had cracked.

Like all materia, the bangle shone. Crafted of dozens, _hundreds _of tiny materia beads, each little bead catching the light and throwing it back into her face, the bangle shone like a small sun. Hundreds of beads, each and every one of them a full-fledged, Mastered materia.

Of course, the use of such a bracelet as an active offence would require immense power. Yuffie had never heard of any woman in her family managing it.

"How many beads?"

"One hundred and fifteen actual Mastered materia, something like two hundred, at least, non-classifiable materia."

"How did it recover? Is there a Mastered Heal in here somewhere?"

"It didn't have to recover, Yuffie. This bangle absorbs almost all elemental damage."

"But I saw it _melt_."

"No, you saw your mother fail to call it properly. In her desperation to save you, she made the mistake of ceasing to care about her own life."

Yuffie felt her knees just... Stop. She couldn't lock them anymore. They turned to the same liquid that filled her great-grandmother's coffin. She sank to the floor, wrapped her arms around those liquid knees.

And the tears she had held back for so long came. She didn't cry for only the fact that her mother's death really _was_ her fault. She cried because she hadn't saved Aeris. She cried because Vincent Valentine had lost his family at the age of sixteen, and his father had committed Honour one winter morning some twenty years ago. She cried because Sephiroth had grown up without a mother, and had, in turn, taken her mother from her. She cried for hitting him in the back of the head with a Mako stick because she still had that lingering feeling of _maybe if she hadn't done that, her mother would still be alive_ and she cried because of the way Zack had paled when she'd tried to warn him.

She cried because she didn't know what to wish for. Which part of the world gone to the crapper _could_ she, _should_ she fix? Should she fix her own life, or should she fix Wutai? Did she want to do this at all? Did she deserve to do this?

Would it even work?


	11. Chapter Ten

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer:** I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the concept of materia beading, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of Da Chao into Da Cha O, the Lady Cho Lin Chang, and other things not found in FF7. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Ten**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer:** I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the concept of materia beading, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of Da Chao into Da Cha O, the Lady Cho Lin Chang, and other things not found in FF7. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

_Summer, Year of the Star that Did Not Fall_

_City of Wutai_ _(formerly Da Cha O) --- Palace_

"Blessed be Leviathan, who opens the gates of our birth and welcomes us in death," Yuffie mumbled as she held the three boxes under one arm. "All blessings upon Da Chao, who sows to reap, who gathers beads to string, who stands fair judgment over all."

"Blessed indeed," a soft voice echoed her, "be Leviathan, who opens the Great Gates at life and death, and welcomes us in his mouth."

She knew that voice. Months of fighting alongside its owner, of listening for it, of observing as everybody around her— including her— listened to it made it impossible for her to fail to recognize that voice.

"Vincent?" She asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

"Why in the name of the Planet would you be doing that?"

"Because I need to hear your explanation for this. It is out of character."

"Oh, are you another member of the _There's Always another Choice_ team? Because let me tell ya, there _ain't_ another choice!"

"You have a choice between marriage and Honour. You, of course, chose marriage."

"I'm too young to haul off and commit ritual suicide, Vinnie. Besides, _me_ committing suicide over _you_ is a little too ironic to handle."

"...Ironic."

His tone said he was considering something.

Though his voice usually contained no expression, Yuffie had never considered it a monotone. He spoke in tones— the dialect in Southern Wutai was heavily dependent on tones to convey meaning— it was just that the tones he used, you could never identify.

Her mother, she remembered, had possessed a very singsong voice, with similarly unreadable tones, when she had spoken to Sephiroth.

"Who is Lord in Le Phe Tan?" Vincent asked.

"Mao Li Shu. He threatened to take us to war, Vincent. Either my father issues a public apology for his father's deceit of South Wutai, or I marry his son and make Wutai a vassal state with my father's death."

If it hadn't been so damned dark, she would have sworn that she'd seen Vincent's expression change. The problem was that it could have been a trick of the shadows. The shadow-trick theory, she decided when Vincent unleashed one of those tangible silences, was looking less and less likely.

He was only silent like _this_ when he had something to say.

"I am... sorry, Yuffie."

Tangible silence.

"This all my fault."

Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to accept (or even care about) his apology. Instead, she found herself saying, "He has four pictures of you. He carries them around with him everywhere."

"Is my father alive?"

"If he was Nao Hei Shu, he isn't. Nao Hei committed Honour twenty-three years ago this winter." She paused. "I _think_ it's twenty-three years. Could be twenty-two."

Vincent gave no hint as to his feelings.

Yuffie didn't want to think about what Vincent was feeling. It was probably guilt. Not just because guilt seemed to be Vincent's default emotion, but also because he _was_ responsible, in a way. Perhaps not directly— twenty-three years ago, Vincent wouldn't have been able to return to Wutai, but his father had killed himself over Vincent's absence.

Tangible silence.

"Why don't _you_ issue the apology, Yuffie?"

She resisted the urge to just cry. She should have issued the apology. But her father had made her sign that damned scroll, and then kept her under house arrest until they received Mao Li's reply.

"It's too late. We've made the announcement... Signed the contract... I can't back out. That's the worst part. I mean, if I wanted to, I _could_. But I shouldn't, because if I back out of marriage, what's to say I won't back out of business deals?"

"Business deals?"

"Okay, you know what Wutai used to be known for? And I mean the Da Chao region."

"Materia beading."

"Yeah. Well, Shinra confiscated all our materia after the war. Not only did those bastards kill my mother, they stole our livelihood. Kinda hard to make materia beads if you haven't got any Mastered materia."

"Is that why you stole materia?"

Yuffie nodded. "I'm trying to rebuild our business in it. After all, we're the only ones who ever did it. I'm thinking, maybe, if Tifa's not too mad at me after this, I could get her to wear some of our stuff. Maybe Cloud, too. I _know_ I can get Elena to do it. And Reno's got an earring, right, so I could probably convince him."

Vincent went quiet again.

"Bad idea?"

"Why not Cid or Barrett?"

"Cid's not likeable. I don't hear about all that many people wanting to emulate Cid. Nobody's going to care if he wears it. And Barrett... Well, Barrett doesn't seem the type."

"Advertising."

"Yeah. Why do commercials when you've got friends in AVALANCHE who are willing to swear by your stuff?"

"Would they be?"

"Well, yeah! Vincent, okay, look at this." She took out her mother's bangle. "See this? _Sephiroth_ hit this with a Fire3 spell. I saw it. Do you want to know what killed my mother? His _sword in her stomach_. Not his magic."

"Your mother wore that?"

"Yeah."

"When she died."

"Well, no. See, Sephiroth hit it with a Fire3, she tried to call its power but did it wrong, so it got kinda melty, and then she gave it to me and told me to run."

Vincent just looked at her. She sighed, walking towards the Palace doors. "Come on in, Vinnie. Since you're not here to try and talk me out of it, we might as well do a little catching up."

"The only thing I needed to know was why, Yuffie."

"Well, now you know. I have a couple of things _I_ want to know."

She watched him shrug. For a moment, she thought he would stay where he was. She thought wrong— he followed her almost immediately.

She led him through the Palace. The currents that had led her to Chekhov's home had vanished. No, this time, she moved of her own will through the dark and almost-silent halls.

She found her room, slid open the shoji door. She didn't bother to ask questions until she'd lit the paper-covered lamps.

When she turned back to face Vincent, she nearly screamed.

His cloak didn't cover so much of his face anymore; he'd trimmed off part of the collar that had covered his face. Not only that, but Yuffie could immediately tell, once she had sufficient light, that he'd cut his hair.

It was short, now; a "respectable", "professional" length.

That haircut was why she nearly screamed. It wasn't Vincent. Vincent was dramatic, dark, brooding. Very much the type of guy to have long, beautiful hair. And now it was short. Professional. Not Vincent.

"Vinnie, your hair!" She cried. "You cut your hair!"

Vincent's eyes crinkled a little. For an instant, the corner of his upper lip twitched upwards.

"Cloud noticed that first, too."

She couldn't resist. The urge overpowered her. She hated herself for doing it, because she'd hated the idiot girls who'd done it to her, when she'd first cut her hair.

She stood up on the tips of her toes and stretched out a hand. Vincent, not knowing what was coming, bent down a little. He didn't actually need to. She could reach the top of his head while standing on tiptoes.

Her fingers slid into his hair. She tousled it a little, just getting a feel for how different it felt and looked.

A year ago, before she'd honed her people-reading skills, she'd never have noticed his faint blush. Even though his skin was ultra-pale in the dimness, thus making any red tint in his skin stand out, she wouldn't have noticed it. She wouldn't have noticed it because she wouldn't have known to look.

And now, she couldn't stop looking for things like that.

He shifted slightly away from her, and, blushing herself, she dropped her hand. She backed away a little.

"Sorry," Yuffie mumbled. "I swore that if anybody I knew ever cut their hair, I wouldn't just run my hands through it, but I guess that was a promise I couldn't keep."

"Tifa and Shera did that too." He made a small sound, something Yuffie figured equated to a chuckle. "Repeatedly."

"The first time I cut my hair, before I'd even put highlights in, people on the street would just walk up to me and put their hands in my hair. It was really annoying."

Vincent's eyes crinkled again. His upper lip twitched again. It stayed twitched for exactly six seconds.

Yuffie counted them. _One-Materia-Two-Materia-Three-Materia..._

Gawd, he really had a smile that choked up her breathing. It was every bit as perfect as those glares he absolutely had to practice in the mirror everyday. No, it was even better, because it wasn't designed to make her want to pee her pants.

Vincent reached out his human hand. It found its way to the side of her face, moved to approach her hair.

Yuffie reached up with her left hand and pulled the ribbon. Her hair fell out of the simple braid.

Vincent's eyes widened. "Your hair."

"Yeah. Dad kept bugging me about it, so I wound up not cutting it. That was about a year ago..."

The longest portions of it brushed just past her shoulder-blades. It was nowhere near as long as Vincent's had been when he'd cut it, but it _was_ a decent length.

Her hair grew like bamboo. Actually, a rather lot like bamboo, because bamboo grew quickly and everywhere. Nothing stopped bamboo from growing except death, and it was almost completely beyond control, because it had an underground root system.

Gawd, she hated bamboo. They had bamboo forests just north of the city. Planting bamboo anywhere within the limits of a city or a town was illegal, now. You just couldn't control bamboo. One summer, you had a cute little miniature bamboo forest. The next summer, you didn't have a miniature bamboo forest; you had a full-grown bamboo forest that was growing fucking _everywhere_.

"Speaking of irony."

"Huh?"

His hand was still in her hair. He was still brushing his fingers through it. Playing with it.

"I cut my hair, you grow yours."

"I don't think that's actually ironic."

"Fitting, then. We seem to have... traded places. It is I who joins AVALANCHE, and you who turns them away."

"That _is_ fitting."

"Grossness," he said.

Yuffie laughed. That word, coming from his mouth! It was both endearingly funny, yet obviously foreign to him. "You know, you've gotten better at this whole socializing thing."

"Necessity is the better part of genius."

"Meaning you had to?"

"Meaning I had to."

Yuffie laughed again. She saw his eyes crinkle at the corners again. His lips twitched upwards. This time, they stayed up for the count of thirteen seconds.

"Why did you have to?" She asked.

He still didn't take his hand out of her hair. "The same reason I cut my hair."

"Okay, then, Mr. Evasive. Why did you cut your hair?"

"I had to."'

"And why did you have to?"

"Because I had to."

Yuffie took a different tack. "Vinnie, why are you being so evasive? It's not like you."

"Yuffie, the answers I have to give, would you believe them?"

"Well, yes, because it's you giving them to me. I'm the liar here, not you. So tell me: why did you cut your hair? Why have you had to get better at socializing?"

"For the past eight months, I have been a blackjack dealer in a casino in Gold Saucer."

The first thing that struck her about this was not the fact that Gold Saucer had casinos. It was the fact that Vincent had set foot in Gold Saucer without being dragged. Her wonder at Gold Saucer possessing casinos came second.

"Vincent, you went to Gold Saucer. And nobody dragged you. That's a freaking _miracle_."

Tangible silence. Vincent continued to play with her hair, although his grip tightened for a moment. He was studiously watching it pass through his fingers, deliberately not looking at her.

"Sorry." She paused. "I never knew Gold Saucer had casinos..."

"They are hard to find... They only open at night, and Gold Saucer no longer advertises them the same way they advertise the rest of its attractions."

"You mean it's always had casinos?"

"Forty years ago, it had nothing but casinos."

Yuffie blinked. She tried to imagine Gold Saucer without the Chocobo racing and jump portals and the battle square and other stupid games.

She failed.

"Hard to imagine, isn't it?" He smiled at her again.

That was what, four times in one night? She wondered briefly if he had hit his head somewhere, or if Cloud had dosed him with Hyper. Vincent's willingness to socialise had improved, but even so... Could he change this much in just a year?

Still smiling, his eyes met hers. The way they crinkled at the corners made his face seem more human.

She almost, _almost_ smiled back.

"You're smiling," she said.

Not the brightest thing she could have said. But, well, Vincent already knew Gold Saucer being nothing but casinos was hard for her to imagine. Why not just cut straight to the chase and ask what was on her mind?

"Yes," he replied. "I am."

"That was four smiles in one night." _What did I do to deserve them?_ "And I've only ever seen you smile once before. One smile in three months, Vincent. And then four smiles in one night? That's... Out of character."

"And you've only smiled once. When I last saw you, you almost always smiled."

"I've laughed."

"And even your laughter has changed. Neither of us are the people we came to know."

His hand stilled. His gaze travelled from her eyes to someplace behind her head. His expression changed from the warmest she'd ever seen it become to a study in non-emotion. It was so emotionless that it seemed to radiate anti-emotion.

Yuffie felt eyes drilling into her back. Somebody was giving her a death glare so potent she could physically feel it, she could _feel_ the _die, die, die_ rays punching holes into her shoulder-blades and she didn't know who it was.

She turned around.

Vincent's hand dropped from her hair.

Three men stood on the other side of the still-open shoji door.

Tsen Li had a very forced look of apathy on his face. Mao Li wore a grin that Yuffie thought had to hurt his jaw, it stretched so far.

And her father...


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer:** I DO, however, own the concept of this story, the name Phe Tsen Shu, the rest of the Shu family, the concept of North Wutai and South Wutai being separate countries, the concept of materia beading, the city of Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of the name Leviathan into Le Phe Tan, the bastardization of Da Chao into Da Cha O, the Lady Cho Lin Chang, and other things not found in FF7. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Eleven**

He heard laughter. Feminine laughter, but he couldn't imagine who would be laughing at the moment. Yuffie had left earlier, to go get something of her mother's. He didn't know of any other women living in the Palace.

"You know, you've gotten better at this whole socializing thing."

That was Yuffie's voice. But... Yuffie had left. And if she had returned, then why hadn't she come to greet them and show them this wonderful object that had belonged to her mother?

And who was she talking to, anyway?

"Necessity is the better part of genius."

That was a man's voice. Yuffie was talking with a _man_? In her _bedroom_? At _night_?

"Meaning you had to?"

"Meaning I had to."

What in the name of Leviathan? Tsen Li moved forward until he had crept up to Yuffie's shoji.

The shoji stood wide open. Yuffie obviously didn't care who saw or heard them. Was this a way of ensuring that nothing untoward happened? Or was it some sort of insult?

Through the open doorway, he could see a tall, dark-haired man looking down at Yuffie. The man had entangled his right hand in Yuffie's hair.

From the angles of their heads, Tsen Li could tell that the only things they were aware of were each other.

It was horrifying. This, this, this _unknown man_ literally towered over her! He stood head and shoulders above just about every other man in the Palace that Tsen Li had seen (excepting himself, but then again, he was slightly shorter than this man). Yuffie had no protection against him at all! None!

Yuffie laughed. "Why did you have to?"

_She has a nice laugh_, Tsen Li found himself thinking.

"The same reason I cut my hair."

"Okay, then, Mr. Evasive. Why did you cut your hair?"

This was enough. She was in her room, in an intimate position, at night, with a man she had not bothered to introduce to Tsen Li. If he was right about their intentions for each other, this counted as a breach in their engagement contract!

As Tsen Li hurried away to go find his father and Lord Godo, it occurred to him that he was holding Yuffie to a double standard. He dismissed the idea quickly. After all, he'd decided to have the decency to wait until _after_ they were married to take another lover.

This was obviously a longstanding relationship. Unfortunately, this meant that Tsen Li was not the victim here. The stranger was.

He found his father and Lord Godo playing a game of Go. From the layout, it looked as though his father was winning.

"Father!" Tsen Li hissed. "Lord Godo. Please, if you would come with me? I think I have found something you need to see."

Mao Li stared at him, but then stood with the aid of a servant. He took up his cane and moved towards Tsen Li.

"Idiot. This had better be good."

"No," Tsen Li replied. "No, it's not. It's horrible."

Godo stood after him and moved to follow.

He led them back to Yuffie's room. All three of them walked silently, though Godo somehow managed to make even less sound than Tsen Li or Mao Li did.

_Damned ninja_, Tsen Li thought.

They arrived at Yuffie's shoji to no different a sight from the one he'd left.

"And you've only smiled once. When I last saw you, you almost always smiled," the man said.

"I've laughed."

"And even your laughter has changed. Neither of us are the people we came to know."

The man looked up. His hand, which had been running through Yuffie's hair, stilled.

Tsen Li stared at him, making sure to make eye contact. He couldn't hold it, though. The man had _red eyes_. It was the creepiest thing he'd ever seen. He didn't want to look at him any longer.

So he looked at Yuffie's back, trying to hide his weakness with a show of apathy. Maybe the man wouldn't notice that he hadn't been able to hold eye contact.

Yuffie turned around. The man let his hand fall.

She looked at Tsen Li for all of a second before her gaze slipped to just beneath his right shoulder.

Tsen Li looked down.

Godo was glaring at her, his eyes narrowed. Tsen Li could have sworn he saw some sort of unholy light emanate from Godo's eyes.

"Vincent Valentine."

"Lord Godo."

"I would have expected this from that Ren-whatever fellow, but not from you."

The man named Vincent said nothing. He merely looked at Godo. His eyes never left the general part of the room where Godo's face was.

Godo tried to stare back, but even he couldn't hold the man's gaze for long.

"Phe Tsen?"

Tsen Li had to bite back a cry at the happiness in his father's voice. He'd never heard his father sound like that, except for once.

But that had been years ago.

Vincent visibly flinched. It was the first expression Tsen Li had seen him show.

"Who asks?"

His father's response to the question nearly gave Tsen Li a heart attack. The answer made no kind of sense.

"What is snow?"

Vincent flinched again. "According to Le Phe Tan legend, it is Leviathan's way of rubbing sleep from his eyes... Many foreigners become confused by this, as we call Leviathan the 'unsleeping one'."

"What do _you_ believe?"

But Vincent shook his head. "I once believed both that Leviathan never slept and that snow was proof of his sleep. Now I know that snow is frozen water."

Mao Li sighed. "You look so much like him, but you're so young. And so pale. Are you his son, by any chance?"

"Whose son?"

"Shu Phe Tsen's."

Vincent threw back his head and laughed.

Yuffie skittered away from him, her hand darting out to grasp a shuriken. She watched the man named Vincent with a wary expression on her face. Godo looked as though someone had struck him.

"I haven't heard that name in a long, long time," Vincent said. "Why do you ask?'

"So, you _are_ him?" Mao Li asked.

"I was, once. Why must you know?"

Yuffie continued to watch him.

"Because I've been looking for him for forty years."

Vincent blinked. His gaze went to Yuffie for a moment. "Yuffie, relax. I swore I would harm none in AVALANCHE, or their kin. Besides, _they_ don't understand what's happening. _They_ are no threat at the moment."

"Sorry, Vinnie. It's just I've never heard you laugh before."

He was her lover, and she'd never heard him laugh? How odd.

Vincent looked over at Mao Li. "How long ago did my father die?"

"Twenty-two years this winter. He went with honour."

"Honour, of course. Always with Honour. Were you proud of your younger brother?"

Tsen Li blinked. The sudden bitterness in Vincent's tone took him by surprise. Vincent had been so mild. Guarded, but mild. And now...

"What kind of question is that?" Mao Li demanded.

"What is snow?"

"Damn you... I'd thought I would be proud. Turned out that I wasn't. I was horrified."

Vincent nodded once. "It has been... an experience, seeing you again, Uncle. Pay respects to Father for me?"

"Pay them yourself, boy. I'll not have you staying away anymore. Why did you never come home?"

But Vincent didn't answer. Instead, he bowed low— too low. His head damn near hit the floor. Nobody bowed that low anymore.

And then he moved towards them. Past them.

"Vincent," Godo said. Somehow, he'd managed to tear his gaze from Yuffie.

"Yes, Lord Godo?"

"Had I known, I would have given her to you. In a heartbeat. You wouldn't have even had to ask."

"Well thanks, you jerk! Nice to know I'm something other than, oh, I dunno, an _unwanted cat_."

Their eyes moved back to Yuffie. Instead of simply gripping her shuriken, she prepared to throw it.

"I'm afraid I don't take your meaning, Lord Godo. Why would you give your _daughter_ to me?"

"He meant give my hand," Yuffie snarled. "It's always the same, isn't it, Godo? You bastard. You're afraid the deal with Mao Li is off, so you're trying to make sure you've got some place to send me that isn't here."

"That's not it at all, daughter!"

"Oh, shut up. I know when people are lying to me."

"Daughter, I said that wasn't it and I meant it! I was telling the truth!"

"Wow, old man. You, telling me the truth? That's what, the first time in five years?"

"Hush! You don't know what you're talking about. I tried to explain as best I could, but you never listened. You never understood."

"Maybe I'd have listened if you'd looked me in the _eye_ every once in a while."

"You impudent little... You're lucky I loved your mother. I'll tell you that much."

Tsen Li blinked at the sudden hostilities between the two.

Yuffie recovered first from the shock of what Godo had said. She straightened, adjusting her kimono.

"I see. Well, Father," she bit off the word as though uttering some sort of curse, "if you weren't telling Vincent you'd have offered my hand to him if you'd had even the slightest clue, what were you telling him?"

"Oh, I meant that part of it, Daughter." Was Godo mocking Yuffie's use of _Father_? "What you failed to understand is that I am not so desperate as to make sure you're 'anywhere but here'. Stop living in the past."

Living in the past? Yuffie had struck him as forward-thinking. She seemed to live exclusively for the moment. For example, that incident on the motorcycle, when she had somehow driven into oncoming traffic and then laughed, proclaiming, "GAWD, WHAT A RUSH!"

Tsen Li looked over at Vincent. Vincent wore a carefully blank expression. His face was mask-like. Hell, it had long passed _mask-like_, run by _unreadable_, shot _expressionless_ to bits, and was now in the territory of _if it wasn't so obviously human, I'd wonder if he didn't get a face transplant from an alien_.

"_I'm_ the one living in the past," Yuffie mumbled. "Whatever, old man. You're hopeless."

Godo started. "Yuffie do you still see me as the man who—"

She looked up. When she spoke, her voice had gone sharp. "Who told me that I looked too much like my mother, and that I was physically painful to look at, and that you didn't want to see me in the Palace unless you called for me? All in maybe two breaths? Yes. I do."

"That was six years ago, Yuffie."

"I was eleven years old! What kind of man tells that to an eleven year old?"

Vincent's gaze snapped to Yuffie. Tsen Li wouldn't have thought she'd startled him if his movements hadn't been so quick. Everything else about him screamed calm. Even his voice, which should have betrayed _something_, betrayed nothing but tranquillity.

"My apologies, but it would feel wrong to leave without resolving this issue. Lord Godo, you have misinterpreted our actions."

What was the man _doing_? Godo would have let him walk away without consequences if he hadn't interfered. Why would he draw attention to himself now, when Godo was in a foul mood? That would only ensure that Godo biased himself against him.

Surely he had a reason for this? Nobody could be that honourable. Not even somebody who had grown up forty years ago.

Godo laughed. "What's to misinterpret, Valentine? I found you standing over my daughter, your hand in her hair, your eyes on her alone— looking, frankly, like you were going to kiss her and more."

"I held no such intentions for your daughter."

Held? Ah, so he had gained those intentions by staying? Tsen Li shook his head. He had no right to mock this man, even if he only did so in his mind.

"So you say, Valentine. But you are a private person when it comes to intent and emotion. If you think I haven't noticed the discrepancies between your words and your—"

"—Say deeds and you will regret it." Vincent's mouth hardened into a thin, tight line.

"Double," Yuffie added, hefting her shuriken again. "Vincent's a lot of screwed-up shit, but he's NOT a hypocrite."

"I wasn't going to say that." Godo sighed. "In any case, regardless of your intentions, you have ruined my daughter's reputation."

"I haven't ruined Yuffie's reputation. My intentions were nothing but honourable, and my actions were—"

"­If you finish that sentence, there will be _consequences_," Tsen Li found himself growling. "Your actions were an open insult to my claim on Kisaragi Yu Fi."

"Cripes, Tsen." Yuffie glared at him, rubbing the back of her head. "You are one hell of a possessive person. I mean, you outright told me that as soon as we're married, you're running back to Le Phe Tan to establish a permanent affair!"

Oh. No.

Mao Li looked over at him. "Is this about Xu Lin?"

Tsen Li grit his teeth. Who else could this have been about? He'd only been planning to marry her for ten years.

"Yes, Father. It's about Xu Lin."

"It's really quite touching that you want to honour the promise I made ten years ago, but that is not the way to go about it."

Same old idiot Father; this wasn't about honour or promises. This was about politics. Xu Lin came from the southern-most province. Marrying her (or at least making her his consort) would shut up the dissenting southern clans.

He informed Mao Li of this.

Mao Li's expression went hard.

Tsen Li prepared himself for a fight.

"Tsen Li," Vincent said with a deceptively mild tone. "Don't. Lord Godo, we have gone off topic. I maintain that my intent was honourable and however it may have seemed, nothing untoward would have come of my actions."

"As the case may be, Valentine. As the case may be. But as her father, I have the right to punish you for your actions."

It seemed that Godo wasn't good at listening to people. Tsen Li wondered again why Vincent had spoken when he had.

"As Yuffie's betrothed, I would like to be the one to decide that punishment," Tsen Li announced.

There. If she had been trying to get revenge on him, she would think she'd succeeded.

Well. He'd wipe that smirk out of her mind right now.

"You may, Tsen Li." Godo made a little bow. "I give you full authority."

"Vincent Valentine, you are now persona non grata in Heavenly City Da Cha O. Do not return to Heaven so long as Kisaragi Yu Fi and I are engaged... or married."

Vincent asked the requisite question. "And if I do?"

"You will be arrested, and then marched off the top of Da Chao-statue."

"Tsen Li! That is too harsh a punishment for your own flesh and blood!" His father cried.

He felt his eyebrow twitch. So what if this man was related to him? He'd never met him before in his life! He owed Vincent Valentine NOTHING. Especially since Vincent didn't even have the decency to use the family name they shared.

"That is far too harsh," Godo agreed. "And, frankly, I'm not willing to waste men trying to march him off Da Chao."

"Fine. Arrest him and forcibly remove him from the city."

"Agreed." Godo turned to the aforementioned man. "Do you understand these terms, Vincent Valentine?"

Tsen Li saw Yuffie's mouth open, but she spoke before he could stop her. "He does NOT! This is ridiculous! Tsen Li, you're acting like a spoiled, contrary child!"

Tsen Li snapped. "Hold your tongue!"

"No! This whole thing—"

"I said HOLD YOUR TONGUE!"

Startled, Yuffie went silent for a moment.

"If this is some twisted way of avenging yourself for what I plan, then it is YOU who is the child. My country comes first to me, and always will."

"_Your_ country isn't the one that's going to become a vassal state! I don't _care_ if you make arrangements with this Xu Lin woman! I've never met her, and as long as she never lives under my roof, I'm not GOING to care!"

"Oh."

She was considerably less shallow than he'd thought she was.

"Yuffie, stop," said Vincent. Of course, it wasn't actually talking. It was more of a well-pitched murmur, clearly audible but not loud at all. "I understand the terms, Lord Kisaragi, Future Lord Shu."

"Then leave this place and do not return," Godo intoned.

Vincent bowed again, again ridiculously low, and walked away.

The instant Vincent had left their sight, Yuffie marched over to Tsen Li. She glared at him, obviously focusing on his eyes. Matching gazes with an extremely angry Kisaragi wasn't his idea of an action with a high likelihood of positive consequences, but he couldn't bring himself to look away. His pride held his chin up, made him look down his nose at her.

Her left hand fisted in his collar. She yanked it, tugging him toward her. She released him after a moment, when she had him at the height (or distinct lack of it) she wanted him.

She took two silent steps back. And then, too fast for him to see, she did something.

Something solid collided with his nose. It hit him hard, it him fast, and it managed to hit him a good three times before he realized what was happening.

Before he could regain his balance from having his nose broken, both cartilage and bone, something a ridiculously bright shade of yellow hit the side of his head. Apparently, this was her immaculate left sneaker (and he wondered (because when you've just had your nose broken and weren't all that mentally balanced to begin with, you wonder stupid things like this) why she was wearing sneakers inside the Palace. Custom dictated the removal of shoes upon entry into a home. Of course, the sneakers could have been her choice of house shoes, but that seemed outlandish). Her follow-through managed to whip his head so that it tilted directly to the left.

Yuffie shifted her weight, insanely quickly for a girl wearing a kimono, and ploughed her right foot into his ribs, snapping her leg out at the knee perfectly.

He stumbled backwards, crashing into a thin wall and sliding almost bonelessly— and certainly without dignity— onto his butt.

Yuffie hauled him up by his hair. She pushed-threw him away from the wall and kicked him in the kidneys.

Tsen Li collapsed to his knees, chest heaving for breath that pained him coming and going, nose gushing blood, his entire body rebelling at the agony.

"He was my **FRIEND**, you bastard. He was a **FRIEND**, and that's all he was, and he was one of the **ONLY** people to treat me like an adult! And now you've gone and—"

She launched herself at him, kicking him square in the centre of his back. He fell forward, onto his face, and she began to kick him in the ribs, occasionally kicking him in the side of the head for good measure. At one point, she went so far as to stomp on the back of his head, apparently trying to grind his nose and the floor beneath it into a tiny greasy stain left upon a single woodchip.

"Is that what you would have had me do to Cloud, huh? Or Tifa? Or Cid? The members of AVALANCHE are my friends, you bastard! You stupid, selfish bastard! The only things I had to make me feel better about this stupid marriage was the knowledge that I could convince my friends to wear the bead work we made, but now that's not gonna happen, because AVALANCHE is gonna get pissed! So not only have you taken away one of my friends, you just ruined Wutai's future!"

She kicked him hard in the ribs again, this time on the side of the ribs she _hadn't_ broken. "I STOLE MATERIA FOR **SIX YEARS**, YOU BASTARD! I LIED AND I STOLE AND I NEVER GOT TO COME HOME BUT FOR A MONTH OR TWO, AND NOW IT WAS ALL FOR **NOTHING!**"

He heard several bones crack at the same time. Pain lanced up his right side, as well as his left. He swore he could feel something puncture one of his lungs.

It was at that point he passed out.

The last thing he heard as he drifted into nothingness was Yuffie sobbing, repeatedly, "I worked so hard... I worked so hard... And now it's not going to work... I can't save Wutai..."


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Twelve**

_The Next Day_

—**And there were white berries growing on the vines and it was like, oh my Gawd, so AWESOME. Man, you really should have come with us.**

**I AM THE GREAT NINJA YUFFIE!**

—**Just because he hanged me from First Face's hand doesn't mean I have to dislike the place! Actually, I kinda see it as a favour. . . Now I won't have to do Penance after Final Confession. I can just do Final Confession and ascend the Pagoda.**

**HAND** **OVER YOUR MATERIA AND** **YOUR GIL.**

—**oh, shut up, Cloud. Look who's talking about CRAZY. Anyway, did you know that if you jump off First Face's hand and survive. . . ? Any wish you make, (but just one, tee-hee, and no wishes for more wishes, 'cos Da Chao ain't stupid) will come true. Any wish at all. You can wish anything you want.**

**OH GAWD, AERIS! AERIS!**

—**I don't know. I don't think anybody's ever done it.**

**ARE** **YOU **SURE **YOU DON'T NEED YOUR MATERIA?**

—**I don't **know **that it's true. I think I'm gonna try it someday.**

"Cloud."

Cloud woke up from the dream. He blinked, but his eyes were crusted with sleep.

He could vaguely make out a black and red figure.

"Vincent?" He asked.

"Yes."

"Did you get an answer out of her?"

". . . Yes."

Vincent's expression couldn't possibly mean anything good.

"What happened?"

"Too much."

Cloud's brain, having just woken up, was not able to deal with cryptic statements. And even for Vincent, that was a hell of a cryptic statement.

"What do you mean?" He asked, his voice sounding like something that had just crawled out from under a rock for the first time in fifty years. He didn't think there any real way for sludge to physically cover a sound, but if it had been possible, his voice would have been dripping sludge left and right. And not just sludge, either. It'd drip goopy-"I just woke up"-eyeball-gunk, too.

"It means that Yuffie and I were seen together in her bedroom. At night. With no Godo-approved chaperones. This event was naturally misinterpreted."

Cloud blinked. "So, wait. Godo thinks you were about to seduce Yuffie?"

"Something like that, yes."

"That's like. . . child molestation, Vincent. That's—" He couldn't help it. He laughed. In between puffs of laughter, he managed, "Oh god, you are (ha-ha-ha) so not a child molester (hee-hee-hee) it's not even funny (ha-ha-ha-ha)."

"I fear they will close down the city because of my actions."

"Vincent, that's crazy."

"Tsen Li banished me from Wutai. Permanently."

"You're kidding! Good god! And Yuffie let him?"

Vincent sighed. "No, she tried to stop him. There was nothing she could have done."

"Nothing she could do?"

Yuffie, helpless? That was weird. It was actually a disturbing thought. Part of him had recoiled at seeing her suspended from Da Chao precisely because he had never thought of her as helpless.

Of course, another part of him had smirked and said, _Glad she's got what's coming to her._

"Technically, by being in such a position, I ruined her reputation. Her father had every right to demand reparation. Not even Yuffie could override it."

"That stinks."

"I suppose." He paused. "Cloud, if Yuffie were to approach you about a business deal, you wouldn't say _no_ immediately, would you?"

"What kind of business deal are we talking, here?"

What an odd question for Vincent to ask. Since when did Vincent care about business? Or ask questions he deemed personal?

"Human advertising."

Human advertising? What the hell was happening _now_? Cloud repressed a sigh. Vincent was usually cryptic without trying to be, but this was just too cryptic too early in the morning.

"Well, what would I be advertising?"

But Vincent shook his head. "Say she didn't tell you immediately. Would you say no immediately?"

"Well, no. Of course not. If Yuffie wanted me to advertise something, it'd probably be okay."

Vincent's crinkled a little. That was the first sign of a smile. "No, it would be more than okay, Cloud. Years ago, before the Wutai-Shinra War, northern Wutai was famous for a process called materia beading. When Shinra defeated Wutai, they confiscated all of Wutai's materia."

"Materia beading? Is that like using materia as beads?"

Vincent shook his head. "I don't know. I'm not north Wutaian, so I don't know the process and nobody would tell me. The end result, however, is turning materia into tiny beads. Perhaps each bead truly _is_ a fully-formed Materia. Again, not being from north Wutai, I cannot say."

"So, basically, it's beads. That are materia. Or the other way around. What's it good for?"

"Many, many things. Yuffie showed me a bangle made entirely out of materia. It survived a Fire3 attack from Sephiroth with no damage."

_Whoah_. Cloud blinked. "Heh, you're kidding, right? She'd want me to use this stuff?"

"You and the rest of AVALANCHE."

Cloud grinned. "Vincent, if this stuff is as powerful as you say it is, I can't wait to get my hands on it. I'd take her up on that offer in a heartbeat!"


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Thirteen**

_City of Wutai_ _--- The Palace_

Yuffie glared down at Tsen Li. She didn't feel sorry in the least. He'd only gotten a taste of what was coming to him. He deserved to be hurt so much more.

The one thing she'd spent almost her _whole life_ working for, the one thing she'd wanted above all others. . .

Gone. Just like that. There was no _way_ AVALANCHE would agree to wear her city's beading, not with Vincent permanently banished, Cloud, Tifa and Cid barred indefinitely from the city of Wutai. . .

She wanted to cry. But she'd already cried enough for the next couple of years.

So instead she steeled herself and tried to think up another plan. Still glaring at Tsen Li.

"Yuffie."

She turned to see her father standing in the shoji doorway.

Her father held out a small, thin bracelet. It only had about sixteen beads, all of them dark green.

She accepted the bracelet, looking closely at the beads and running her thumb over them. The bracelet contained Restore, Ice, Fire, and Thunder.

Four Restore beads. She looked up at Godo, then back down at Tsen Li.

"Why not Chekhov? Or Aunt Kagoko?"

"Neither Chekhov nor Aunt Kagoko broke six ribs, his nose, or came close to rupturing one of his kidneys. You hurt him, Yuffie. Now you heal him."

"Bastard."

"Oh, so now I'm a bastard because I make you take responsibility for your own actions?"

"He doesn't _deserve_ a Cure spell! He's jeopardised Wutai's future with his punishment. How the hell do you think I was planning on transferring our beading to AVALANCHE?"

". . ."

"Yeah!"

_Yeah, that's right! Take _that_, you jerk!_

But Godo threw the bracelet at her. She caught it, almost purely out of reflex. Even though materia beads couldn't break, she always found her heart in her throat when people threw the beading around.

Shinra hadn't taken their beading. Their possibility of making more, yes. But what bead strands they'd had, Shinra had never known about.

If any one of those strands had broken, or been destroyed. . . They would have had no way to replace them.

She placed the tip of one finger on each Restore bead. One of the things she'd learned long ago was that the beads wouldn't work unless they were in conjunction with their own kind. You couldn't put separate the beads of a materia and expect them to work— you'd tie your fingers in knots trying, because you had to touch each bead to contact the materia.

Well, unless the strand was at least a hundred years old. The century-old strands were so powerful because the materia became familiar with each other. You tapped the largest bead of one spell and it could contact the others around it, no matter where they were on the strand.

She concentrated. Using four materia at once wasn't what you called a cake walk. It was more like trying to walk barefoot on broken glass with one of your knees out of whack so you couldn't distribute your weight evenly.

"Cure2," she murmured. Four beads flashed once, brightly.

A blue-green glow enveloped Tsen Li's body. His teeth gritted. He whimpered quietly, but those whimpers turned to grunts, moans, and finally, into a scream.

Potions and Hi-Potions hurt so much that the manufacturers included a chemical that temporarily reversed your brain chemistry, causing the brain to incorrectly interpret the nerve stimulation as pleasure, when it was really agony. Magic did no such thing. Doctors refused to use magic in situations such as this one, because the pain overrode almost all anaesthesia. The patient squirmed and thrashed and tended to do more damage to his body than had already been done.

She could hear his ribs grinding back together, the cartilage in his nose popping back into place, the bones that underlay his nose healing.

When the glow receded, Tsen Li opened his eyes and glared at her.

"You attacked me," he snarled.

"Yeah. Yeah, I did."

"Why?"

"Because you've gone and ruined Wutai's future, that's why! I've been trying so hard for _six years_ to get the materia we need for beading, and then. . . And then you had to go and make sure AVALANCHE would get all pissed off and refuse to wear some of our strands!"

"That was technically your fault, Yuffie. If you hadn't put yourself in such a position. . . "

"You bastard," she said through teeth clenched so hard they hurt. "I'm not sorry I kicked you in the shins on the fourteenth anniversary of your uncle's death. I'm not sorry I confused you with your third cousin. I'm not sorry I beat the everliving hell out of you. Don't you _dare_ try to blame this on me! It was all perfectly innocent. Nothing happened, nothing was going to happen. You and Godo just overreacted."

"Of course we did," Tsen Li said. He was looking down his nose at her, and he was lying on a bed!

That stupid, egotistical jerk! How _dare_ he be so condescending! She'd just kicked his ass and handed it back to him, gift wrapped, with a yellow silk ribbon and a get well card.

She wanted to maul him all over again.

So she did the only thing she could.

"Sho Tzu," she snarled. Immediately, a shadow in the corner of the room straightened and came into view.

It turned out that the shadow hadn't been a shadow after all, but a ninja.

"As Second of Da Cha O, I, Kisaragi Yu Fi, declare Heavenly City Da Cha O under martial law. Permit no-one to enter or leave Heaven under any circumstances. Da Chao weeps. Heaven folds unto herself like a lotus flower at night."

"As you wish, Second."

"Sho Tzu!" Her father gasped.

Sho Tzu paused by the door, the tassels of his headband— almost exactly like Yuffie's own, but made of poorer materials— swaying slightly. He bowed extremely low to Godo.

But he said nothing. He emitted one of those tangible silences, the kind that Vincent seemed to ooze.

In Wutai, complete silence was bad. A pause, an 'hm' sound, a sigh. . . You did anything not to be silent. Because silence was a negative, just like "ah" was an affirmative, or at the very least, a sound of understanding.

"Sho Tzu, as Lord of Heaven—"

"My apologies, my Lord, but I swore fealty to your Second, not to you. I have been hers from the time of her mother's death."

_Boo-ya_, Yuffie thought. _I win this round, old man._

"My great-grandfather! My mother. . . You aren't going to let them in? They need to be here, to help plan the wedding!"

Sho Tzu looked sharply at Tsen Li. "My apologies, Lord-to-Be, but you are not of Da Cha O. Were you not of noble birth, I would have to ask you to leave our city."

That shut Tsen Li up right quick. He glared at Yuffie, looking like he wanted to rip her arms off and eat her spine.

_Sorry, Tsen. Only AVALANCHE members get to chomp on my backbone._

She watched, pleased, as Sho Tzu, the Jonin of Division Six, left the room to do her bidding.

* * *

Yuffie shrugged out of her kimono, slipping instead into a shinobi shozoku. She didn't bother with the scarf or the sleeves. She wore the stereotypical black instead of her preferred dark blue.

She pulled a tekagi onto her right hand, smiling at the way the metal of the handclaws gleamed. Almost like materia, really.

Calmly, she untied her headband and replaced it with one that looked very similar. Materia strands hung from the ends of it, instead of her usual tassels.

The tekagi slipped back into its box. Her mother had been the one to teach her to use it, and she really didn't feel like thinking about her mother at the moment.

She held her tabi in her right hand as she strapped the Conformer to her back and padded from her room, towards the training garden.

She found nobody in it and privately thanked Leviathan.

She untied the strap that held Conformer to her back and hung it on a peg on the garden wall.

She took up a basic defence position, the very basics of Da Chao, and began to flow through her kata. First form into second into third; she moved up through the ranks of Da Chao, all the way up to the final kata.

All Creation. She performed the basic prep moves, but kept the energy inside of her. Instead of unleashing it, unrefined, in a single blast, she used it the way her ancestors had intended her to use it.

As a boost to her physical power. She pushed the massive energy of All Creation into each kick and punch, slowly leaking it, the air glowing as she moved her limbs through it.

_Maybe this is what sex feels like_, she thought as, liquid-kneed, she sank to the ground for a few moments. Her limbs felt like whipped cream and her stomach was all shaky and every muscle in her body ached.

She recovered quickly. Exhaustion hadn't been the cause of her pain. All Creation tended to leave her weak and shaky, no matter how she used it. Chekhov had told her she would outgrow it as she used it more often and more effectively, but Yuffie wanted to reserve it as a technique of last resort.

"That was some serious speed."

She rose to her feet and whirled to face Tsen Li. He was wearing a simple gi. The belt, she noticed, was black with seven white notches.

"Have you ever wondered what South Wutaian martial arts are like?"

She had. But Vincent had more than cured her of that curiosity. After all, why wonder, when you can _learn_ them?

Those mornings when they'd risen early and found a private place to spar and share hand-to-hand techniques were among her cherished memories.

"Yes," she replied.

"Have you ever wondered which is better?"

"I don't think either of them is better than the other. I think it all depends on the martial artist."

He smirked. "Why don't we test that theory?"

Oh, this was gonna be good. A seventh-degree blackbelt in what was probably a non-sneaky form of martial arts, up against a true Da Chao master.

Da Chao, that hodgepodge of various ninjutsu techniques, didn't measure skill in belts. You were a ninja, or you weren't. After you were a ninja, you went on to become a Da Chao master. And that was that.

"What school do you follow?" She asked. This was going to be _funny_.

She'd _make_ it be funny, if she had to.

Tsen Li grinned, a grin so wolfish it would tie with Reno's Predatory Grin (TM) in a professional contest. "Mi Tzu, of course."

Mi Tzu. . . A variant of Mizu? And Vincent said he'd studied Mi Tsu. . .

Oh Gawd, this was gonna be good.

"You're on," she said, flashing a predatory grin of her own. "Winner gets to race to the top of Da Chao wearing normal clothing. Loser gets to wear the winner's ugliest kimono."

"Done."

And with that, he launched himself at her. Yuffie laughed, leaping high into the air, backflipping at the height of her jump, sending her into the wall. She managed to backflip from the wall to the top of the wall, and then she dove towards him.

She landed on her hands, performed a handspring, and hit him with a roundhouse kick the instant she was back on her feet.

Another jab with her foot, and then she was driving her fists into his stomach.

He managed to block several of her punches, but when he tried to turn them against her, she slipped out of his grasp and rammed her shoulder into his ribs. He went flying backwards.

He used his momentum to somersault while she moved towards him. He swung out with his left fist. She dodged, but it had been a feint. He landed his first punch to her stomach.

Yuffie dropped all pretences at being an honourable fighter. She began to move even faster than she had before, ducking around him with odd little waltz-steps, never once actually _attacking_ him.

And then she rolled _between_ his legs, kicked his left knee out from under him when she regained her feet, and pulled his neck into a death hold.

The position reminded her of that time Cloud had helped her improve her neck-breaking technique. Not that Yuffie's way hadn't worked, but it had definitely needed improvement.

And Vincent, standing to the side, had suggested twisting her passive arm _this_ way, instead of _that_ way, and not trying to jerk down. And then he'd said to do this thing with two fingers of her active arm.

Made for a cleaner, faster break, he'd said.

He'd been right. Yuffie had tried it on a thug who'd tried to beat her up, and the technique had worked like a charm. She'd never gone back to the technique her father had taught her.

"I yield," Tsen Li hissed.

Yuffie grinned. "I thought you would. Why don't we get you changed?"

". . . You were being serious?"

"Don't pull that with me!"

"Yuffie, height difference?"

"Oh. . . yeah. Okay. You can wear one of the outer layers of my yellow formal kimono over a hakama. How's that?"

He sighed. "Fine."

"Good! Cos if you objected to the yellow, you could always wear the pink."

"Not. Happening."

"Thought so."


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Fourteen**

_The Highwind_

Cid Highwind stared at the panel. Vincent and Reeve stared with him.

That little window that informed them all of the airship's fuel levels had bad news. Very bad news.

"Don't you have a back-up fuel supply in every region?" Reeve asked.

"Yeah. But we're shit outta luck anyway. My back-up's in mother$&in _Wutai_."

". . ."

"Yeah, that's about our situation, Vince."

"This sucks."

"Yeah, Cat." Cid swore.

Reeve swore also. "How the hell are we supposed to leave, then?"

"You're all damn lucky I had the foresight to keep a few dozen barrels in the cargo hold." Cid belly-laughed. "I had you all worried. Admit it, Vince! The unflappable Vince, taken in. . . "

"That wasn't funny." _And he's usually so _funny_, too. What's wrong with him?_

Cid sobered up almost instantly. "A little too much like the Yuffsters, wasn't it?"

Vincent nodded.

"Whelp, let's get that shit loaded into my baby and get going, since there ain't a damn thing we can do here."

* * *

Yuffie was five feet ahead of him at the moment, and he was closing in. His legs were longer than hers; it was inevitable that he would catch up.

But Yuffie had been training her entire life for speed.

He wore the yellow kimono over a dark blue hakama, and, only partially to console him, she had worn a plain white kimono with red silk trim.

He was coming closer and closer, closer and closer.

Sprinting up this incline was harder than she remembered it being, but damned if she was going to stop for breath. Used to be she could get halfway up without having to stop. Her lungs hadn't even started burning yet. None of her muscles ached. She could keep going.

She could keep going. So she kept going.

Behind her, Tsen Li swore. "You could have warned me we would race on a _rocky_ incline."

She didn't waste her breath replying. She needed that breath; she wasn't going to waste it on somebody who didn't deserve it.

She wound up beating him (though, to his credit, not by as large a margin as she'd thought she would) to the top.

"What the hell kind of physical training do you _do_?" She demanded. "You're two years older than I am, something like nine inches taller, and yet, you're only a seventh degree blackbelt and you can't tie me in a footrace."

"Compared to you, almost none," he admitted. "I don't really have time to train the way you do. Or the reason. Most of my duties are, you know, indoors. Talking to people. Politics."

"And _mine_ aren't? I'm the Second of Wutai. The Second's duties aren't just ceremonial, you know! I have to help run this city every freakin' day! It's what I've done almost all my life, in some way or another! And you know what? I still find time to train. And if I can't find time, then I make time."

Tsen Li looked down. "I've never taken the whole fighting aspect of my training seriously. That's why I have guards."

Yuffie snorted. "Well _that's_ a smart way to live! Somebody could pay one of your guards to kill you, and what would you do then? Gawd, you're dumber than I thought!"

". . . That thought never occurred to me. Why not just hire an assassin?"

"Because paying off your bodyguard would be cheaper. And easier. And less noticeable. Why do you think I _don't_ have guards? And why do you think my father doesn't, either?"

"I'd thought you were too poor to afford them."

Wow. Just, wow. What a condescending jerk!

She almost wanted to lie and tell him that Vincent was actually her lover, and that they'd been secretly having an affair for a year, just to piss him off.

Maybe she could 'accidentally' throw him off First Face's hand.

She decided against it.

Instead, she started to explain the relationship between her and Vincent. The _real_ relationship.

* * *

"Alright, we've got power. And pretty soon, we're gonna have _thrust_. And then we're gonna own the sky!" Cid pumped his fist into the air, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"I understand the concept of an airship, Cid."

"I thought you could use a little reminder, seein' as it's been forever and a day since you've been on this beauty."

Vincent sighed, but said nothing further. There really wasn't anything to say.

As they gained altitude, he noticed something.

Two figures were standing on First Face's hand. One wore a very feminine kimono over a hakama, while the other. . .

Was wearing a red and white kimono and had hair that just barely brushed her shoulder blades.

Vincent blinked, his superhuman vision already telling him that the people standing atop Da Chao were Yuffie and Tsen Li.

Yuffie was gesturing wildly, but suddenly went still.

* * *

"Why did you _really_ want to race up here, Yuffie?"

She sighed. "Well, at least you're smart enough to know something's up."

"Tell me. Please."

"Okay. . . Do you know the legend of First Face's Hand?"

"Isn't that the one that says if you jump and survive, then one wish will come true?"

"Yeah. Have you ever wondered what you'd wish for?" Idly, she performed a kata Vincent had taught her. It brought her to the edge of the hand.

Tsen Li waited a long time to respond. "It's always been a moot point. This is my first time on Da Chao."

"Just. . . what would you wish?"

She was going to have to make her decision soon. Bring her mother back. . . Or save Wutai.

"I'd wish that I didn't have to marry you."

"Aw, how sweet of you. Bastard." She ground her teeth. "When I was little, I dreamed of wishing to see, just for a day, how my life would be if my mother hadn't died."

"And what would you wish today?"

But Yuffie didn't answer him. Instead, she turned to look at First Face's. . . well, face. "All blessings upon Da Chao, who sows to reap, who gathers beads to string, who stands fair judgment over all."

First Face didn't answer, of course. He simply stared at her with those unseeing eyes.

And then she began to scream. "If I survive, Da Chao, let it mean that I am a worthy leader for Wutai! That is all I want, is to be worthy of Wutai, to be the one to save her! Take my life, if I'm not worthy, but if you can make me worthy, then do it! Make me worthy, Da Chao!"

She gave Tsen Li a little wave, and stepped backwards.

_I want to be worthy. I want to be worthy. I want to be worthy. I want to be worthy._

* * *

Vincent felt his heart jump into his throat. His throat tightened while his bile rose at the thought of what Yuffie had just done.

He had to get to her. . . Had to save her. . . He had sworn to never harm any member of AVALANCHE. And staying still was definitely harm.

"Holy $&!" Cid cried. "Hot $&in' _damn_! She just—"

But Vincent didn't hear the rest of Cid's words. He was casting aside his cloak and hastening towards the airlock doors in the cargo hold.

Before anybody could stop him, he had reached the cargo hold and pulled the lever. The doors opened.

* * *

As Yuffie fell, she thought, oddly enough, of her father. All their bitter moments, every ridiculous test he'd put her through. Every time he'd berated her for beating him at his own game.

Every time she had cried to stay home. Every time he'd turned away, laughed at her, mocked her. Pretended she wasn't there.

And then her thoughts drifted to Tsen Li. Beating the everliving hell out of him had been fun, in a way. Even better, he'd deserved it. He had tried to ruin Wutai's future.

Well, she wouldn't let him. If she survived.

Right before she realized that this was the stupidest thing she'd ever done, she thought about Vincent. That weirdly intimate and yet totally innocent moment they'd shared. The way he'd patiently taught her pieces of the Mi Tsu style of martial arts, the way he'd thrown himself into learning Da Chao.

Those early mornings when they had hurled themselves at each other, fists flying, legs snapping out. They'd never tried to injure each other. . . But they both knew that the other wasn't fragile. They hadn't been trying to hurt each other, but they hadn't been trying _not_ to, either.

That warm expression on his face as he'd played with her hair haunted her.

And, just when she realized that this was the dumbest thing she'd ever done, and not only was it the dumbest thing she'd ever done or thought of doing, it _redefined the term _"dumb". . .

A pair of arms wrapped around her.

Yuffie found herself face-to-face with a very odd looking Vincent. His eyes hadn't flooded red, but they were glowing extremely brightly. He was holding her in some sort of death grip, as though he feared that he'd let go.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight. Her body, naturally, slid up against him. Vincent stiffened for a minute. The glow intensified.

And then he began to change. It wasn't a normal change, where his whole body changed at once. . . This time, it seemed randomized for every part of his body.

He screamed as Chaos' wings exploded from his back. Various parts of his body tried to transform. Yuffie bit back a scream when Vincent's mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth.

Within a half second— and though all of this seemed, to Yuffie, to pass slowly, it took a lot shorter of a time than she estimated— Vincent's body had entered such a state of flux that the only constants about him were his eyes. . .

And the wings.

Chaos spread the wings against the wind, slowing their fall. Making it manageable.

Vincent made noises in the back of his throat. They were like a cross between a moan and a snarl.

She found the Blessing upon Da Chao tearing itself from her lips. It forced itself from her very extremely numb mouth in something that might have been a whisper or a scream. She couldn't tell. Vincent's throat noises seemed to coincide with the Blessing, but that might just have been wishful thinking on her part.

Wind buffeted them, and her kimono, which she'd chosen partly to ensure her dignity as she fell and partly to shut Tsen Li up, did not billow gracefully as she'd hoped. She'd known it wouldn't look graceful, but she'd hoped to be able to manage it with dignity.

She didn't. Her hair and kimono flew all over the place, slapping Vincent in the face at times, sometimes whipping into her eyes.

"Little dragonfly," Vincent hissed in a voice that wasn't his. "Know how to fall."

And that was when she realized that the wings were retreating into Vincent's back, that the purplish tint to his skin was going pale. . .

The flux ended. Yuffie automatically pulled herself into a proper falling position. Vincent wrapped himself around her.

She closed her eyes.

They hit the ground.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Fifteen**

_City of Wutai_ _--- Palace_

Vincent opened his eyes to see Yuffie lying on a futon, her breath quiet and even. He could tell just by looking at her that she had sustained little physical damage.

He examined the room he'd woken in. It looked like Yuffie's room. Shuriken of all shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling. Someone had covered the walls in yellow paper, and he recognized a distinctly South Wutaian pattern in the fabrics of the green rugs on the floor. Blue paper covered the lanterns, blue ribbons hung from the ceiling.

The shadows were particularly deep in a specific corner. He stared into them, discerning the shape of a man after a moment.

The man chuckled. "Impressive, Mr. Valentine. You went from consciousness to wariness in under a minute."

"Why are you here?"

"Please, forgive my rudeness, Mr. Valentine. I am Chang Sho Tzu. That is not the House of my birth, of course. But the House of Chang was kind enough to adopt me into it when I swore fealty to Kisaragi Yu Fi."

"You had a child attempt to follow me when I arrived here."

If ninja could look puzzled, Sho Tzu certainly looked that. "I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. If I want to know a person's movements, I will send a member of Division Six."

Odd. Either Sho Tzu was lying. . . Or somebody else named Sho Tzu had sent that child after him.

Vincent glared. "Why are you here?"

"I am the Jonin of Division Six, Mr. Valentine. I swore fealty to Yuffie when I was seventeen, shortly after her mother's death. I have protected her since then."

"You think me a threat?"

"You damaged her reputation, and immediately after you left her sight. . . She went berserk. She seems to think she lacks the power to save Wutai."

"Da Chao, make me worthy, you stubborn bastard!" She murmured.

Vincent blinked. Sho Tzu blinked. But Yuffie only rolled over and went back to sleep.

"Define berserk."

"She attacked Tsen Li. She broke almost all of his ribs, the bone _and_ cartilage of his nose, and came close to rupturing his right kidney. Several rib fragments pierced his lungs. It was a miracle he survived, even with Chekhov casting Cure3 on him repeatedly." Sho Tzu quieted for a moment. "I had to drag her off him when she tried to crush his skull."

That didn't sound like Yuffie at all. She was a very physical person, giving out physical affection as well as blows when she was angry, but still. . . That kind of violence directed at another person, and one she had promised to marry? It just seemed so out of character.

"Did she give any reason for her actions?"

Sho Tzu sighed. "She operates under her own logic. I know her better than most residents of this Palace can claim, but even still, she is a difficult creature to understand. She screamed her reasons for the Palace to hear, but—"

"—They made no sense."

"You have the right of it. She seems to think that he's destroyed Wutai's ability to sell the materia strands."

"He hasn't, not if she can find a way to contact Cloud. Of course, delivering the strands may be a problem."

"She will be pleased to hear that."

"Pleased and angry at herself. She'll have jeopardized her marriage to Tsen Li for nothing."

"I think she took extreme satisfaction in beating him. She doesn't seem to like him overmuch."

"He's a dickhead," Yuffie announced. "And you two _do_ know that talking about a person behind their back is rude, right?"

"My apologies, Second."

"I'm sorry, Yuffie."

Wait. What. Yuffie was awake.

Yuffie was _awake_.

"Yuffie, what possessed you to jump off First Face's hand?"

Her head dipped onto her chest as she mumbled something Vincent barely understood.

"_That_ legend, little Lady?" Sho Tzu cried. "You threatened your life for that that idiot legend!"

Something inside Vincent snapped. He crossed the room in an instant, hefting her by one arm.

"Yuffie Kisaragi, you try my patience to its end! You risked your life for a child's story! Had I not—" He didn't finish that sentence. He didn't want to think about the way that sentence would end. Instead, he paused. Let the sentence he didn't want to say resolve itself in her mind. "For a story."

"Sorry, Vinnie. I just." She sighed. "I know it was a dumb idea. Okay? I knew from the start that it was a dumb idea. But if Da Chao is real, then, then why can't the legend be real, too? I mean, I know Leviathan is real. I've called Him. So. . . It made sense at the time, you know?"

"No. I don't know, Yuffie." _And I'm glad I don't know. Sane men do not jump out of airships after teenaged girls._

"You're right. Sane men don't jump out of airships after teenaged girls." She smiled at him. "But guess what, Vinnie? Neither do monsters."

He blinked. _Did I say that out loud?_

Wait. _Neither do monsters._

"What are you trying to say?"

She shrugged. "Just a thought that struck me. It seemed like a good idea to say it."

Impulsive. She was so impulsive. And, Leviathan help him, that was one of her best qualities. Half of her genius stemmed from her ability to look for alternative solutions and her inability to stop herself from testing those solutions.

They were silent for a few moments. At length, Vincent sighed. "Yuffie, if you ever do something that stupid and crazy again. . . "

"You'll never forgive me, right?"

He laughed. It startled him as much as it startled her. "Yuffie, I cannot yet forgive myself. What right have I to withhold forgiveness from you? What right have I to forgive you?"

"Then what will you do?"

He didn't know. That was the thing. He couldn't predict his actions in such a situation. He didn't want to predict such a situation.

So he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Promise me you will never do that again."

"I dunno, Vinnie. Now that I think about it. . . " She grinned. "Free fall is actually kinda fun."

He resisted the urge to tear out his hair. "You try my patience _beyond_ its limits! You risked your life! You nearly died! And now that it's over, free fall is fun?"

"Yep!"

Vincent sighed. "Promise me, Yuffie."

"Okay. I promise I will never jump from deadly heights. . ."

He let out a relieved breath.

". . .Without a parachute."

". . . " He nearly tore his hair out this time. "You are incorrigible."

"And you just encourage me more!"

"Do you mind?"

"I know, I know. I'm totally ruining your lecture, aren't I? But I meant what I said. I'll never try free fall without a parachute. I swear on the Scales."

It would have to do. He likely wouldn't get much better than this. "Sworn and witnessed. I'm holding you to that promise, Yuffie."

She nodded. "I keep my promises, Vincent."

This was the most serious he'd seen her in some time. No, scratch that. This was the most serious he'd seen her. Even after Don Corneo had hanged her from Da Chao, when she had begged to let her join AVALANCHE, she hadn't sounded quite like this. She had whined and cajoled in an annoying, high-pitched voice.

But.

He raised an eyebrow and crossed the room until he stood at her side. He bent down until he could comfortably touch her hair.

She was so tiny. Almost a foot shorter than he, with a waist he could almost completely encircle with one hand and slender shoulders. So tiny, so frail-looking, and yet so sturdy.

He left his eyebrow raised. "Really?"

Yuffie blushed, her cheeks going bright pink. The way the pink contrasted with her just barely golden skin gave her colour an almost dusky look.

Something inside him clenched at that flush on her face. It wasn't the same tightening of his throat when he thought of her jumping off Da Chao, or the way something had squeezed his heart when he thought he wouldn't be able to make it in time. This was something else. Something better.

Almost pleasant.

"Well, yeah, there was that one." She paused. "You aren't. . . Mad about that, are you?"

_Angry?_ _Do you _fear _my anger, Yuffie? And you always seemed so unafraid._

"Vincent, please don't be mad at me. The rest of AVALANCHE probably hates my guts right now. . . I can't lose _everybody_ again. I know you hate being touched but—"

He found himself laughing. Not that he found her pain funny. He simply laughed that he could have been so blind. She didn't fear his anger, she never had.

"Vinnie? Are you okay?"

"I am fine, Yuffie. I. . . You have changed a great deal, in only a year, but some things remain the same." _And for that, I am glad. . ._

"You need to start making sense, Vinnie."

(Hr)

Godo paced in his study. Nobody would call it pacing, because it didn't follow a set pattern. He didn't look anxious. But if you knew Godo well enough, you would know that he had a tendency to walk when he was nervous.

He doubted he'd ever felt so disturbed in his life. Learning that his daughter had attempted suicide had been. . .

Hell. It had been hell. He knew that she had jumped from Da Chao; he knew that she had hit the ground because gravity only works one way, but he didn't know if she was alive or not.

He assumed alive, because Sho Tzu had posted ninja to guard Chekhov's house and had stayed with her since then.

_I should be the one to watch over her. I'm her father. I should be with her._

After all, it was at least partly his fault. Though he had no real idea why she'd jumped, he could make an educated guess. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Yuffie had loathed the idea of marrying Tsen Li, even if it was a marriage in name only. That he had given her hand in marriage to a man she barely knew— and, when she came to know him, detested him— to save the honour of a dead man surely galled her.

He could lie all he wanted and say that he had done it to prevent a civil war. But that was only half true. Shu Mao Li had issued two demands in addition to the surrender of contact with Vincent Valentine. Fulfilling either of those demands would have appeased Mao Li.

Yuffie had to hate him. She had to hate herself, for letting her pride make her sign the scroll. She had to hate the House of Shu.

And in a world where you are surrounded by what you hate with only one escape rout, what do you do?

_Why? Why didn't I move sooner? I love her, I do. . . So why did I choose to finish that damned meeting before I went to her?_

Tsen Li had returned to the Palace, shouting about how she had jumped off Da Chao (this was about the last thing anybody had actually told Godo). And Godo, who had been meeting with a representative of a village to the north, had chosen to finish out that meeting before seeing to his daughter. Politically and economically, it was a good choice. But it had meant. . .

It had meant that by the time he'd arrived at Da Chao's feet, Division Six had already found Yuffie and carried her away. He'd checked the house Yuffie had claimed for her own, then rushed to Chekhov's house.

_Damn you, Sho Tzu. Are you really so suspicious? Why didn't you bring her to the Palace? She belongs _here

A genin of Division Six appeared in a corner.

"Lord Godo, the Second has regained consciousness."

Godo nodded. "Will Sho Tzu permit his liege to see her?"

The ninja nodded. "Yes, Lord Godo. She is ready for visitors."

"How is she?"

"I don't know, milord. I have not seen the Second's condition."

"I will be there shortly."

"Yes, milord. I will inform Sho Tzu."

And like that, the genin was gone. Godo sighed, not bothering to wonder about holes in his security. He slid the shoji closed behind him.

His feet seemed to know the way to what had once been Cho's house better than he did. If asked to give directions, he could not have done it, but he found his way there without even thinking about it.

_Ah, Cho. You would be so proud. . . She is your mother's granddaughter in more than just name._

Removing his shoes once in the foyer, he remembered why he hadn't visited Chekhov at home in years.

Chekhov sat at her table, calmly drinking tea. Sho Tzu sat with her. Chekhov held three coins in one hand. A bundle of scrolls sat on the table.

The Yi Jing.

"She is in her old room, Lord Godo," Sho Tzu said without looking up. "I have instructed the guards at the door to let you in."

"Would they stop me if you hadn't?"

"Division Six belongs to the Second, Lord Godo."

Hidden meaning: yes, because they answer to Yuffie or I, and not you, and have never answered to you, and they never will.

_Damn you, Yuffie. You invoked the Right of Deuce just to spite me._

The two ninja stepped aside as he approached her door. He slid it open to find Yuffie sitting on her futon, perfectly unharmed, perfectly coifed in a kimono he knew she hadn't left the house wearing.

It looked achingly familiar. He was sure he had seen that kimono before, but he couldn't place where.

There was someone else in the room. Godo found his eye drawn inexorably to the right. He saw only the briefest flash of red before he whirled to stare at Yuffie.

"Kisaragi Yu Fi, you are an idiot and you are lucky that I do not disown you. You jump off Da Chao-statue, and then bring Vincent Valentine back into the city?"

"Vincent saved my life. I'd be squashed like. . . a piece of fruit that's been thrown from very high up if Vincent hadn't been there. I think we owe him a night in Wutai."

Godo sighed and turned to face the man. "Is that true?"

Vincent nodded once, then turned his attention back to Yuffie.

His insides burned. Vincent Valentine was probably a _hobo_, and he had just dismissed him. A _hobo_ had dismissed him.

_Who the hell rules this city?_ He found himself wondering.

Yuffie looked at him, but Godo couldn't tell what she was thinking. Her face was perfectly blank.

And then she dropped her eyes, bowing her head until he couldn't see much of her face.

"I require a private audience with Lord Shu Mao Li," she said. She sounded tired. "Will you permit that?"

"Give me back Division Six."

"_Will you permit that?_" She looked up at him, glaring.

In that moment, with her hair hanging in a thick braid she'd pulled beside her face, her eyes narrowed in anger, wearing a kimono he recognized from Leviathan-knew-where. . .

. . .she looked more like her mother than she ever had.

And he remembered where he had seen that kimono before. It had been Cho's. "That was your mother's kimono."

"I asked a question, Lord of Wutai."

"Fine. You may have an audience with the Lord of Le Phe Tan in the throne room. Does that satisfy the Second?"

"I am satisfied."

_At least she isn't insulting me_, he thought. But then he realised that he'd liked those times better. This rote, mechanical speech, nothing but traditional phrases, unnerved him.

He wasn't sure whether it made him a failure as a father, or a brilliant success.

"Vincent, I'm not going to report your presence to Tsen Li until noon tomorrow. Make sure you're gone by noon."

He nodded once, then looked back to Yuffie.

Icy little monsters ran up and down Godo's spine at the way Vincent watched her. What was this man's fixation with his daughter? What were his intentions for her? He couldn't recall ever looking at Cho like that, and their marriage had not been one of political convenience.

It had been one of legal convenience, what with the Pagoda passing to the eldest child specifically. So long as a child older than his legitimate children existed, the Pagoda could not accept his eldest legitimate child as Lord or Lady.

"Valentine, we need to talk," he said before he left. "I'll be waiting in the basement of Yuffie's old house."

Vincent didn't respond, but he knew he'd be there. Vincent would know what he wanted to talk about.

And Vincent would come.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars

Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing

They get a kick out of my misery.

I've tried everything short of Aristotle,

Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,

I pray for the day when my ship comes in

And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Sixteen**

_City of Wutai_ --- _Yuffie's House_

As Godo had said, he was waiting in Yuffie's basement.

Vincent didn't bother trying to avoid whatever issue Godo had with him. Godo, like Yuffie, was so adept at dancing around the point of something that he could easily recognise attempts at evasion. And, unlike Yuffie, Godo had learned that letting things slide doesn't always work to your advantage.

"If you wanted to speak with me," Vincent told him. "Speak."

Godo looked at him for a long time. Neither of them moved.

"Valentine, I need to know why. What is your fixation with my daughter? Why do you look at her the way you do? How did you know to save her?"

_Fixation? The way I look at her? Am I fixated on Yuffie Kisaragi? No. I'm a monster. . . My only fixation is Lucrecia. I deserve to love a dead woman, and a dead woman alone._

The world began to sway around him, a sure sign that Chaos was about to speak. No, not speak. Force him to dream.

His eyes closed and he found himself in the usual sea of darkness, a prelude to whatever nightmare vision Chaos wanted to show him.

And then the vision started. Chaos had no words humans could hear or understand, so he communicated with Vincent via images and emotions.

**An endless stone hallway. The cries of an infant echo in a fevered pitch down the hallway. The stones in the walls form the words**

**THOU SHALT NOT FAIL**

**The altar to Da Chao. Someone has desecrated it. In human blood, someone has written**

**THOU SHALT NOT SUCCEED**

**A great wood building. Everywhere he looks, he sees wood painted red. And then the colour bleeds out. The walls, now grey, begin to splinter. Timber goes flying. Tapestries follow the walls.**

**Through the walls that are not there, he can see the great funnel storm rove in from the sea. The clouds above him read**

**THOU SHALT NOT DESTROY**

**His third uncle's wedding ceremony. The bride wears a lovely pink kimono, but she has no face. No one in the crowd that surrounds him has a face. Their clothes begin to rot, and so does their flesh.**

**Maggots writhe in and out of his hands. They write a letter in their passage**

**THOU SHALT NOT DEFEND**

**Lucrecia, lovely Lucrecia, whom he loved, and loves and will always love, lies rotting in Wutai's cemetery.**

**Her face is not contorted in agony. She does not reach out with pleading hands. She watches with a placid smile and decomposing eyes, one bloated hand to the doubly bloated stomach. Her left hand drifts at the top of the tank. **

**A fish with Hojo's face eats her toes.**

**He sees the last words written of nothing, on nothing. They merely flash into his mind.**

**BUT THOU WILT DO ALL** **OF THESE THINGS, BECAUSE I AM NOT GOD.**

"Vincent?"

Vincent opened his eyes. "My apologies, Lord Godo. I am afraid I cannot explain myself at this time."

_You never make sense, but this is ridiculous. I don't understand you at all_.

But Chaos did not answer.

"If you are in love with my daughter, then you should know that you're far too late."

"Lord Godo, I am not a man capable of love. I lost the ability to love long ago. From what I remember of it, though, love is nothing like riding a bicycle. Once gone, this is not an ability that will return."

"Of course it isn't like riding a bicycle, you fool. You can forget how to ride a bicycle. You don't forget how to fall in love. How can it return to you, if it's never been gone?"

"Kisaragi, do not presume to tell me of what I am or am not capable. I would know better than you. You do not speak to a man. You speak to a monster. Are monsters capable of love? They are not."

"Then you saved my daughter out of selfish reasons?"

"I did."

"And what were those selfish reasons, Vincent Valentine?"

He had saved her because. . . Because. . .

Because he had made a vow? But that couldn't be the only reason. He was sure that wasn't the only reason. And technically, doing something because you said you'd do it is not a selfish act.

Vincent didn't answer.

"I thought so. You don't know why you saved her, do you? You know only that you had to act. And tell me, Vincent Valentine, in those moments, what did you fear?"

Godo Kisaragi watched him with narrowed eyes, a calculating expression on his face.

"That Yuffie would die."

_Thou shalt not fail. Thou shalt not succeed. But thou wilt do all of these things, because I am not God._

"You did not fear for yourself? You did not fear that she would be insane, or that this was a dream, or that you were going to die?"

"I have no fear of death. I seem to be incapable of it. None of the other options occurred to me."

"Liar."

_Thou shalt not destroy. Thou shalt not defend. But thou wilt do all of these things, because I am not God._

Vincent said nothing.

Godo was silent for a while. But then he sighed, and said, "Vincent, be careful. Your uncle may seem happy to see you, but he is not the man you knew."

"He has not been my uncle for a long time."

"Just be careful. Yuffie values you. I think that whether you are here or you are gone, you will always be as much her right hand as Sho Tzu."

That should not have comforted him.

So why did it?

(Hr)

_City of Wutai_ –_-- Chekhov's House_

_Sometime after nightfall_

Yuffie couldn't sit still. It was one of her eternal failings. When she had to sit still, she vibrated. Not literally, of course. But she would jiggle one knee, or she'd fidget. Generally, she bounced in her seat.

You do not bounce in your seat while you are in a futon. This is one of the basic facts of life. Sane people— and even the ones who could only distantly be connected with the word sane— tend to avoid bouncing while sitting on a futon the way they avoid spraying milk out of their noses.

So Yuffie eventually gave up on trying to follow Sho Tzu's suggestion (it had to be a suggestion, because the Second's employee does not give the Second an order) to stay in bed. If she stayed in bed, she was going to go crazy. Well, no. She was already crazy. But she would get crazier, and Yuffie had deemed herself crazy enough that if she got any crazier, she would be certifiably insane and drooling and foaming at the mouth and convinced that there was another person who looked _exactly like her_ who was trying to ruin her life.

Instead of sitting in bed and meditating, Yuffie went through a countdown of her thirty-five all time favourite ninjutsu moves. And as she did this, she mused on the fact that she was alive. The fact that she was alive meant that Da Chao had seen her as worthy.

Or maybe she wasn't worthy, and Da Chao had decided to make her worthy.

In any case, her wish was coming true. It wasn't her dearest wish, or the wish she'd been wishing from her girlhood. Her dearest wish was a personal wish, a selfish wish, and Yuffie had realized, when Tsen Li had told her his wish, that personal isn't always important. She had realized that the Right Thing, in this case specifically but probably in most cases, usually consisted of sacrifice, and that the answer that pleased only her was _not_ the answer.

It hadn't been an epiphany. She had been sacrificing for Wutai from the age of twelve. She could have killed the entire House of Shu, and effectively solved the problem, but she hadn't. She had chosen to sacrifice, even if only to save her pride. Obviously, she had grasped the concept at least vaguely.

It had been more the acknowledgment of a subconscious process. Like when you keep having nightmares about that physical training test until you finally realize, _hey, I'm having nightmares about this, maybe I should go, you know, _train_, or something._

It had also been an acknowledgment that Tsen Li was a totally rotten bastard and she didn't want to be anything like him. Because he was a selfish condescending jerkface and it would be really hard to look in the mirror and not want to kill herself if she turned into a selfish condescending jerkface.

She was on her fourth rotation of Yuffie's All Time Favourite Ninjutsu Move Count Down (specifically, move number seventeen) when Vincent slid open the shoji door.

"Hey, Vinnie!" She said, not bothering to pause. If she worked quickly enough, she might be able count down to move number eleven before Vincent scolded her for being out of bed.

Move seventeen into sixteen into fifteen. . .

"What did the old man have to say?"

". . . "

Move fifteen into move fourteen into move thirteen into move twelve. . .

"You should be in bed."

She stopped, swearing. "I nearly got to move eleven, Vinnie! Did you _have_ to ruin my fun? It's not like I'm hurt or anything. . . "

"You jumped off Da Chao. Your mental health bears watching."

"Says the guy who locked himself in a _coffin_ for thirty years."

"Yuffie."

"Fine, fine. I'm getting into bed. Now tell me what the old man said!"

"He told me to be careful, and to make sure my intentions remained honourable."

Remained honourable? Like Vincent could have intentions towards her that weren't honourable?

Yuffie dropped back onto the futon. She pulled the ribbon out of her hair. "Well, there's a moot warning. Like you're going to have intentions towards me that aren't honourable."

Vincent raised an eyebrow. And she could actually _see_ him raising his eyebrow, because he wasn't wearing the headband anymore.

"Don't give me that look! You're not attracted to me, and you damn well know it. I mean, how could you be? I'm not pretty."

And it was true. She really didn't have that much going for her, did she? A plain face, scrawny legs, and a bust that wasn't much to speak of. She was. . . Just your average Wutaian girl, really, when it came to looks. Her hair was kind of pretty, but it was nothing special.

Vincent's eyebrow went up a little higher, but he didn't say anything. He just looked at her with this totally sceptical expression, like he wanted to say, _oh really?_ but just wasn't sarcastic enough.

Finally, the eyebrow dropped. He took a step towards her. "Who told you that?"

"I didn't need anybody to tell me that, Vincent. I figured that out for myself. I mean, look at me!"

"I see you."

"See? Can you honestly say that I'm pretty?"

He looked at her for a long time. Not one of those looks where he was trying to see if she met his standards. He wasn't inspecting her. Just looking at her, like she was the most interesting thing in the room to look at while he made up his mind about something.

"Yes."

"But you had to think about it, didn't you?"

"No."

"Don't lie to me."

"I didn't have to think about whether or not you were attractive, Yuffie. I had to think about whether or not admitting so was appropriate."

"Oh." And then she did what she always did. She recovered. "Well, I still think the warning was a moot one."

The corners of his eyes crinkled. He was smiling at her. He crossed the room. "Really."

"Really-really, Vinnie." She put on a chipper voice.

"Are you calling me a liar?" His voice was. . . No, it sounded the same. That was what she noticed about it. It sounded the same. Generally, when Vincent was accused of being a liar, he would sound angry.

But no, he didn't sound angry, not angry at all.

Yuffie blinked. "Uh, well, wait, what?"

He shook his head and oozed a three-beat silence.

_He's gotta count that out in his head_, she thought. _Gotta_.

"Yuffie. . . No, never mind. We should move on."

"Should we?" She looked up at him, made sure to make eye contact. "Why is that?"

"Yuffie."

"No. Vincent, do you know how often people call me pretty? Can you guess?"

He didn't say anything.

"How about never? Does never sound good to you? Cos 'never' is the right answer."

He took another step. "Find another topic."

"Fine. Do you mind opening that dresser over there? Top drawer." She pointed. "I'd do it, but I'm not supposed to get out of bed."

He went over to the dresser and opened the top drawer.

"Okay, if I remember right, there should be a box wrapped in dark green cloth."

He pulled out a box. "This one?"

Yuffie blinked. "Vincent, are you colour blind? That's dark _blue_. But you can keep it out, 'cos that one's for Cloud."

"Is it?"

"Yeah, Vincent. Most people learn their colours when they're really young, you know. I said the dark green one. It should be in the far left corner."

How. . . odd. Vincent had never really made a mistake quite like that before. So far as she'd always seen, Vincent had almost no weaknesses. Of course, one's ability to tell colour decreased in dim lighting, and it _was_ night.

But still.

Vincent found the box on the next try. He brought it over to her, dropping to one knee so she didn't have to crane her neck to see him.

She took the box from him, unwrapped the dark green cloth. It slid into her lap to reveal carved mahogany. Her fingers trembled as she pulled the lid up.

As she had thought it would be, it was beautiful. All dark green beads, linked together with tiny white beads. . . It produced its own light.

"This one's for you." She placed the tip of her index finger on a bead, and began to name the materia.

"I cannot accept such a gift, Yuffie."

He was giving her such a serious look— kind of sexy, actually— and watching her with eyes that had to have just about all of his soul poured in them. The look tugged at her so well that she wondered if he practiced this one, too. The way he practiced his glares and had probably practiced his smiles.

And holy fucking hell their faces were way too close.

"Don't give me that! It's total bullshit. You're my friend, and I want you to have it. I know men don't normally wear necklaces, but it's not like the damn thing's girly or anything."

"Yuffie, it is—"

"Just take it, Vinnie. You're going to be the one to give AVALANCHE their stuff, cos I can't let them in until after the wedding, and I want them to have it frigging _yesterday_."

And with that, the discussion ended. She took the necklace from the box and slipped it around his neck.

Leviathan above and below, they were so close. So close, and he was sexy as hell— why had she never noticed that before? Just as she'd wanted to run her fingers through his hair, she wanted to kiss him.

She wanted it badly.

_Bad idea bad idea bad idea_. _This is a bad idea if I've ever had a bad idea. But man it would just be a kiss, and they already think we kissed anyway and I hate Tsen Li and nothing would _happen _so what harm could it do. But ohmygawd I'll ruin my reputation—_

And by the time she was trying to put on the brakes, she had already slipped one hand to his right shoulder and was leaning up, stretching just a little, her lips grazing his. . .

He didn't even bother pulling away. No, he kissed her back, and she kissed him back, and _oh my GAWD I am kissing Vincent Valentine and it feels sogood._

She opened her mouth a little, scraped her teeth against his lips, and then his mouth was open, too, and she was pushing her tongue into him, and his tongue was finding hers, too and he tasted like tea and day-old sake and maybe even a little smoke.

His right arm wrapped around her, and she threw her right arm around him, and they were pulling closer to each other, her tongue trying to worm its way down to his spleen.

And then they heard the cough.

Yuffie looked past Vincent. There, in the door she hadn't heard slide open, stood Sho Tzu, with an irate looking Tsen Li towering behind him.

_Oh fuck_.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**Note:** the names Reikoku, Nenriki, Kenjin, and Yuraku all have specific meanings. Reikoku is written COLD SEVERE, meaning "relentless" or "cruel". Nenriki is written DESIRE EXERT, meaning "will-power (exertion of desire)". Kenjin is WISE PERSON. Yuraku is written PLEASURE COMFORT and means, essentially, "joy".

**And When That Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Seventeen**

_Late Summer, the Year of the Star that Did Not Fall  
City of Wutai --- The Palace Courtyard_

_Morning_

Chang Gang Wu stared calmly at the young men before him. They were all of them young, inexperienced, desperate to prove that they were worthy. It struck him as odd that a seventeen year old girl could inspire such awe that men her age would walk on broken glass to work for her. He knew from the records that Godo, in his years as Second, had inspired no such awe.

Whatever reason the boys had for wanting to swear fealty to the Second, their youth and desperation made them easy targets. They would believe anything he told them so long as it had something to do with Kisaragi Yuffie. Their desperation would make them careless. They would obey his commands without question for fear that disobedience would ruin their chances of serving the Second.

"The first duty of those who want to be worthy is to guard the body of The Beloved. Only six as-yet unworthy ones may take this duty. I will reward the first six to step forward."

The entire group shifted forward one step. Gang Wu sighed and picked out the six best of them.

Not one of his chosen six had stepped forward in time, but none of the group would dare argue. You did not argue with Gang Wu. Though he technically held no authority in Division Six (that dubious honour belonging to that idiot Sho Tzu), nobody argued with him.

If he had loved Kisaragi Yuffie enough to adopt her mother's family name, surely he was one of her favourites?

It wasn't true, of course. The Chang family had refused to adopt him. He had, after all, stood against the wedding of Chang Cho Lin and Kisaragi Godo. Instead, he had suggested that Cho Lin wed Shu Lao Rei, the youngest of the House of Shu. The House of Chang had been furious with him. Even after all these years, they had never forgiven him for suggesting they throw their lot in with the 'traitors'.

"The second duty of those who would become worthy is to become the shadow of the Right Hand. Three unworthy ones may accept this duty. I will reward those whom I chose."

No such duty existed. In fact, to suggest such an intrusion upon the duties of the Jonin of Division Six was treason and punishable by death. But still, every remaining trainee stood stock still.

It never occurred to them to doubt his word, just as it had never occurred to those three children to doubt that the messages he delivered from Shu Mao Li, Kisaragi Yuffie and Chang Sho Tzu were actually from those who signed them. You did not doubt Chang Gang Wu.

He picked the three stealthiest.

"The third duty of those who would become worthy is to enter the service of the Left Hand. Six unworthy ones may accept this duty. Again, I will have my pick."

The Left Hand, his unofficial title. He was merely a Chunin in Division Six, but his skill and shared last name with Sho Tzu had earned him the nickname. It was as he'd suspected— show people what they want to see, the picture of a strong third-in-command, and they will see it, regardless of the evidence against it.

He chose six. Not the six best, or the six stealthiest. He chose the six of them based on how much hero-worship he saw in their eyes.

"And the final duty of those who would become worthy is to guard that which The Beloved cherishes above all else: our city and country. The rest of you will enter this service."

All of the trainees bowed, shouting the Blessing upon Da Chao. He dismissed all but his six to their duties.

He began his usual speech. "Servants of the Left Hand—"

"AND YOU WANT TO PUT HIM IN PRISON! FOREVER! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

A young man clad only in a hakama passed through the thin shoji walls.

Gang Wu blinked. Yuffie hadn't literally thrown someone out of the Palace since she was thirteen, when Gorky had tried to make her attend the eighteenth anniversary of Shu Nao Hei's death. That had been Godo's last straw. He'd declared her unwelcome in the Palace unless she could prove that he'd summoned her.

The year before that, he'd declared her unwelcome in his sight unless he sent for her. Locking her out of the Palace had been Yuffie's unhinging, too. She stopped putting up with the tours of her mother's home. It was then that she'd set up the traps. Not just mostly-benign rope traps, but complicated, sadistic ones. Like the trap that only affected people shorter than four foot nine. It regularly came close to decapitating children. Or the trap that made the floor and walls gradually heat up, degree by excruciating degree, and locked the doors.

Gang Wu moved towards the man who had come to a stop lying facedown in the dirt. He rolled the man over and blinked.

It was Shu Tsen Li's battered face that stared up at him.

Yuffie leapt through the Tsen Li-shaped hole in the shoji and admired her handiwork.

"What prompted this, my Second?" Gang Wu forced himself to ask.

He knew bloody well why she'd done it. She'd done it because she viewed Tsen Li as a threat to Wutai's economic future, because she hated him, because. . .

Because this entire mess was his fault. Had he been a fool to think this scheme would work?

"That. . . bastard!" She murmured. "He wants to prevent Vincent from taking AVALANCHE their stuff. I can't allow that. I can't."

Ah, Yuffie's greatest fear. The further economic destruction of Wutai. That Tsen Li would attempt to play on that fear told him that he had been right to try to unify Wutai. Only a fool would try to threaten a Kisaragi in a face-to-face meeting.

"My Second, you should calm yourself."

"I will _not_ calm down! He is trying to destroy Wutai, and I won't let him!"

"My Second—"

"I said no! If it wouldn't start a civil war, I'd kill him!"

"My Second, don't even talk like that! If Lord Mao Li hears. . ."

"Let him hear! I don't care anymore! They're trying to destroy Wutai, and I can't let them do it!"

Gang Wu blinked. This was—

Tsen Li was such a fool. This entire thing had been a mistake. He should have seen her love for Wutai. He should have been content. He shouldn't have meddled.

_This isn't your fault. How could you have seen beyond the spoilt brat?_

He should have known that she would give anything for her country, that she would do anything to secure its future. He had been with her for over twelve years, he should have known.

_This is my mess. . . I have caused all of this. But done is done, and no turning back on the long road run._

Gang Wu sighed.

* * *

_Late Summer, Year of the Star that Did Not Fall  
City of Wutai — Palace (Throne Room)_

_Noon_

Vincent bowed so low his head hit the floor. The Five Mighty Gods had assembled, four of them standing behind the Throne and one of them sitting upon it. You did not settle for 'head almost touching the floor' when you had the six most powerful people in North Wutai gathered in one room.

He rose from his bow after a long period of silence. He waited for one of the others to speak as he marked locations. In his five years as a Turk, he had learned to trust that paranoia. You died when you didn't know how many opponents you would face, when you didn't know where the exits were, when you weren't prepared for what your enemies could do when things turned sour.

Yuffie sat on a floor-pillow six small paces in front of the Throne, glaring at Shu Tsen Li. Shu Mao Li and his son stood next to the east wall, the reserved place for foreign dignitaries. Well, Shu Mao Li stood. Tsen Li sat in a folding chair, heavily bandaged and sporting two black eyes.

He saw three vaguely-human-shaped shadows hidden in the ceiling-space above him, plus two dark-clad guards standing on either side of the only door into the Throne Room. He didn't doubt that at least four other ninja had hidden themselves throughout the room. Vincent could take them all if he had to, but it would be time-consuming. It would be easier to just give Godo what he wanted and leave. Quietly. Without killing the people who had stood beside and behind Yuffie for all of her young life.

Tsen Li snarled at him. "Why? Why did you return? Do you really _want_ the Wutaian army to forcibly escort you to prison?"

Vincent said nothing. He stared at the box Yuffie had shoved into his hands earlier that morning when she'd visited him in his cell.

_I thought you would escort me from the city_, he thought. _How quickly you my punishment change, _fair _Lord-to-Be._

He did not voice these thoughts, did not even consider voicing them. Despite his blood relation to Tsen Li, such insolence would bring consequences ('consequences' written with a capital Death Sentence). You did not speak that way to the Heir to a Pagoda, even outside his jurisdiction. Not if you wanted to live.

"Answer me!"

Answers swirled around in his mind, pointed ones and smug ones and hurtful ones, each answer polite but biting in its own vicious way. He had so many things to say to the boy­— and Tsen Li was definitely a boy, because a man wouldn't act like a spoilt child, a man wouldn't throw tantrums, a man wouldn't threaten the economic safety of a nation over a woman who didn't interest him— but none of them would truly answer Tsen Li's question.

And almost all of his answers would get him killed.

"I returned because I had no choice," he said at last. "I swore a year ago that I would never do harm to any in AVALANCHE. When I had it in my power to save the Second, refusing to do so would act as harm."

"And you decided all of this in a split second, Valentine." Had the Northern Wutaian dialect not been a rapidly spoken language, Vincent would have sworn that Godo had drawled that sentence.

Vincent shrugged. "An integral part of being a Turk is the ability to make lightning-quick decisions. Shinra chose the Turks for quick-thinking as well as aim."

Godo snorted. "Say what you like, Vincent. Explain your fixation on my daughter however you want. But at least stop denying it."

"You broke the decree, Vincent. I made that decree with the full authority of the Lord of Wutai. Not even the Second herself can take that decree back." Tsen Li looked smug. "Off to prison with you, Cousin. So sorry you won't be able—"

Vincent found himself gesturing with his right arm. "—I don't recall prison being part of my punishment. I will accept the punishment you decreed, Lord-to-Be, but do not overstep your bounds."

"Am I overstepping my bounds?" The idiot boy raised an eyebrow. "I think not. And even if I were, you hold no authority here. What would you do?"

Vincent inclined his head.

Some people were just stupid. He'd been a Turk. He had lived through things that would probably slaughter Yuffie, and certainly most of Wutai's Mighty Gods. And if Yuffie was a good enough martial artist to regularly beat Tsen Li into a pulp but would not have survived a third of what Vincent had, then where did that leave Tsen Li's skill in comparison to his own?

Short answer? Nowhere good.

Yuffie gave a bark of the bitter-sounding laughter Vincent hated. "Tsen Li, you want to try and arrest him when he's pissed off? Godo's never gonna waste guards trying to make Vincent do anything he doesn't want to do. It's not going to happen."

And then she bowed, bitter laughter still sparkling in her eyes, and said in a raspy voice, "To understand the concept, my son, consider this: _what do you do to a misbehaving 8-ton gorilla?_"

"That's a terrible koan."

Yuffie shrugged. "Think what you want. Just try not to be a big idiot, okay?"

"Fine. But I want him out of the city. He's done more than enough damage to your reputation, and he's tried _twice_ now to ruin my claim to you. If it happens again—"

"What claim, Tsen Li?"

Vincent's gaze snapped to Yuffie. He watched her closely. She'd sounded tired, frustrated. As if she'd had more than enough of pretending to be spunky and just wanted to sink into depression.

In her eyes, he saw a weariness that stretched into her soul. It was a visceral kind of weariness. Her skin looked paler than it had when he'd first arrived in Wutai. Her lips had stretched into a thin line. The line drooped downwards slightly, as though she were having trouble not frowning.

The expression frightened him. Pain twisted in his ribcage. His throat tightened. His stomach clenched into a knot, almost like a fist.

"What do you mean, _what claim_? We're betrothed!"

"Your father might want to end our betrothal. So I'd quit talking about your claim, if I was you."

"This is unbelievable. How _dare_ you!"

Tsen Li stuttered something, but Yuffie cut him off with a wave of her hand, and an imperious wave, at that.

"Tsen Li, just shut up. I'd hate to screw up the throne room, but throwing you through the shoji walls _again_ would be worth it."

Tsen Li's mouth clamped shut. He glared at Vincent. Why he glared at Vincent and not Yuffie, Vincent didn't want to guess.

Vincent ignored him. Instead, he stared at Godo. Godo stared back.

"Vincent Valentine, you saved my daughter's life. For this, I declare your reparation for ruining her reputation paid in full. However, you smeared her reputation further with your actions last night, and for this you must pay additional reparations."

Tsen Li straightened in his pathetic folding chair. "I demand the right, as her—"

"I deny that claim. Shu Tsen Li, you will be silent from now on."

Tsen Li's mouth clamped shut.

"As reparation, I demand you deliver the materia beading to AVALANCHE." Godo paused, licked his lips. "After a two week house-arrest period. Do you understand these terms, Vincent Valentine?"

"I understand these terms."

"Then your sentence begins now. You will serve it out in Yuffie's old home." Godo snapped the fingers of his left hand once. Twice. Three times.

The three shadows in the rafters dropped to the ground. They made only the lightest sounds when they hit the floor. The shadows, probably members of Division Eleven, Godo's own division of ninja from his time as Second, advanced on Vincent.

He stood still, allowed them to herd him to the door, and out the door, and down the hall.

* * *

_Late Summer, the Year of the Star that Did Not Fall  
Onboard the Highwind_

_Mid-Afternoon_

Cid leaned back against his chair, his foot up on the control panel. He bit off a low curse as he listened to the radio. There was still no news about Yuffie. He'd even listened to the Wutaian-only stations, and hadn't heard the name Kisaragi spoken once.

Did Wutai not know that Yuffie had thrown herself off Da Chao? What the hell were they talking about in their damned sing-song chatter? The motherfucking _weather_?

His PHS began to ring. Cid swore when he realized that somebody (probably Reeve) had reset the ring at some point. It was now an idiotic little Icicle Town tune. Cid wondered if Reeve had imagined him tap dancing to the ring.

He picked the PHS up and pressed the small green button. "Cid Highwind here."

"Don't bother lowering the drawbridge, Chief. I won't be back for a fortnight."

Cid choked. "Vincent!"

"Yes, Chief."

"What do you mean you won't be back for two weeks?"

"I'm under house arrest for two weeks."

"We can't just hang around here for two weeks! It's motherfucking August! We can't stick around! Wutai is motherfucking _hot_ in August! We'll die of heat stroke!"

"That's your problem."

"Vince!"

". . ..The problem has not suddenly become mine within the last four seconds. I would suggest returning to Rocket Town."

"Fuck you." He said it without any real emotion behind the words.

You didn't tell Vincent 'fuck you' in any seriousness. Not if you didn't want your brain to melt from the Death Glare he gave you. And Vincent's death glares could be transferred through the PHS.

"Not until you marry me," Vincent replied.

Cid blinked. Vincent had just joked. And, while, yes, Vincent had gotten better at the whole socializing thing. . .

_Hey, let's see how long I can keep him joking!_

". . .Fuck you harder."

"I don't like it rough."

"Bite me."

"That counts as rough."

"Hard."

"That is entirely too much information."

". . .I MEANT BITE ME HARD, YOU ASSHOLE."

But Vincent had already hung up on him.

Cid, being himself, swore. Violently.

"What's wrong, Cid?" Tifa asked as she walked into the cockpit.

Cid couldn't help but notice the way she looked.

Cloud had himself— or was going to have himself, or was passing up— a damned fine-looking woman. Had Cid been five years younger, he would have jumped at the opportunity to bed Tifa. As it was, though, Tifa was entirely too young and pretty and Cid was. . . Well, himself. It just wasn't going to happen.

"Vampire Boy just called," Cid sighed. "Says he won't be skipping up the yellow bar road for another two weeks."

Tifa chewed on that. From the way her bottom lip stuck out slightly for a moment, Cid knew she'd given up. "I'm sorry, but I just couldn't get that one. What 'yellow bar road' are you talking about?"

"In Vincent's words, 'don't lower the drawbridge, Chief'. He means he won't be back for another two weeks."

"Some sort of Wutaian punishment?"

Cid shrugged and lit up a cigarette. "Probably. Who the hell knows?"

Reeve walked into the cockpit behind her. "Do we even want to _know_ what he did this time?"

Tifa laughed; a short, bitter bark. "Considering what he did last time? Probably not."

* * *

_City of Wutai --- Palace (Throne Room)_

_Evening_

Yuffie stared up at the old man before her. As she had earlier, she knelt on her floor pillow in front of the Throne. You didn't sit on the Throne unless you were the Lord of Wutai. Not even the Second had that right.

He looked so frail. His face had deep lines in it. The wrinkles had wrinkles, and his eyes had no crows feet (they had canyons that looked like the ones just south of Wutai). His limbs had withered and wizened until the impression Yuffie received was a collection of dried-up sticks stuffed into a formal kimono and wearing a silly hat.

"Lord of Le Phe Tan," she said. "How fares South Heaven?"

"South Heaven blooms fragrant as jasmine at night. I see that North Heaven is beautiful as ever. Surely at night, the Flower of the North looks like the materia in Lord Leviathan's crown."

She inclined her head. This ridiculous talk, however dumb it sounded, was entirely necessary. You had to do the whole formal, paint-a-picture-with-your-words small talk thing before you got down to business. Only impatient (and therefore weak), stupid (and therefore weak), or hell, just plain _weak_ people tried to skip the small talk.

She couldn't afford to look like any of that.

"Glitters like heaven, The cherished Lotus at night. Leviathan's love," she replied.

"_Da Cha O At Night_, composed by Himura Genji, yes?"

"Correct, Lord of Le Phe Tan. Himura Genji is, I must admit, one of my favourite poets. Surely you have a collection of his poems in your library?"

Mao Li smiled and bowed. "I have several, Second of Wutai. I enjoy Himura Genji's poetry myself. I am the one who ordered a translation of his _Selected Haiku_ into Thai-Wu."

Thai-Wu, the language native to the southernmost part of the Island of Wu Tai. Yuffie blinked. Mao Li was a native Thai-Wu speaker? The House of Shu wasn't from that region— it had ruled Le Phe Tan, which wasn't anywhere _near_ south enough to get into Thai-Wu speaking territory, for centuries.

"Ah, I fear I have confused the Second, intelligent as she is. I did not order them translated for myself, Second of Wutai. My wife is from the Thai-Wu peninsula, and has a difficult time grasping the beauty of Himura Genji's poetry when read aloud to her. Unfortunately, she prefers that poetry be read to her."

Yuffie nodded. "I see. I've read the Thai-Wu translations, Lord of Le Phe Tan, and I must say that your translator did an admirable job. So far as I could glean, nothing. . . got lost. . . in translation."

"I will impart this knowledge to my translator when I light incense at his grave this winter. But surely you have had enough of fripperies, my Second? Surely you would like to explain to me why you summoned me?"

So. Mao Li got impatient first. Lucky her.

"Lord Shu, I fear that you may not want a daughter-in-law who has the reputation I now have."

Not, of course, that her reputation was all that bad. It galled her to say it, galled her the way marrying Tsen Li would gall her. This entire situation was ridiculous. Vincent hadn't smeared her reputation.

A 'funny look in his eyes' and a simple kiss.

Oh yeah. Reaaaaal smeared reputation, there. She was still a virgin. Her reputation was _fine_. But none of three men who had wormed their way into the "currently most-important in Yuffie's life" position the way maggots wormed through a monster's corpse would ever let her say that. Their pride demanded that they insist Vincent had ruined her reputation.

But there. She'd said it. She'd admitted that in the eyes of the more-than-a-little-nutty, Yuffie Kisaragi now had a Bad Reputation. She tasted something metallic in her throat.

"Do not speak so ill of yourself, Second Kisaragi. Your love for your country, despite your dislike for my son, means you will make a wonderful daughter-in-law."

"I was not finished speaking, Lord Shu. As I was saying, I fear that you may not want me as your daughter in law. However, I gave my oath that I would wed your son, and am willing to abide by that oath."

That pretty little speech had taken her forever to compose. And then she'd had to memorise it.

There was a reason the speech was only two lines long.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**Note:** the names Reikoku, Nenriki, Kenjin, and Yuraku all have specific meanings. Reikoku is written COLD SEVERE, meaning "relentless" or "cruel". Nenriki is written DESIRE EXERT, meaning "will-power (exertion of desire)". Kenjin is WISE PERSON. Yuraku is written PLEASURE COMFORT and means, essentially, "joy".

**And When That Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,  
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Eighteen**

_City of Wutai_ _--- Exact location unknown._

_Evening._

The man before him wore two swords and a topknot. Scars covered his face and arms the way bark covered a tree. Actually, he rather _looked_ like a tree. There was something in the city's water supply that turned brown hair green, if you used soap containing certain oils. Gang Wu had never bothered to identify this mysterious chemical.

The not-a-stranger-(unfortunately) knelt on the wooden floors, the knuckles of his left hand brushing the floor and his right palm spread on his right knee.

This was not the appropriate gesture of submission. Not in the Heavenly City Da Cha O. This was a samurai gesture, not a ninja gesture.

Of course, the man wasn't a ninja. There was no mistaking that. Gang Wu thrust away idle wonderings at how the man could bear to kneel in all that armour.

Gang Wu sighed at the samurai before him.

"Our men are in position, sir."

The samurai was taller than he was. Gang Wu had gotten used to being the tallest man in the Pagoda. For some reason, the fact that this nonentity managed to physically dominate him irked him.

"How many have you placed near the wall?"

"A dozen, sir."

"And the Lord-to-Be's personal guard?"

"We've managed to retain the personal guard. We won't be using them."

"Good. It'd be a pity to throw a coup and have it fail because the potential leader dies in action."

"If at all possible, we are going to avoid allowing the Lord-to-Be into battle."

"That is unacceptable. If your Lord-to-Be wants to take over this city, then let him fight for it."

"We are not sacrificing—"

"You _will_ put him in danger! I will not be made a complete traitor to this city."

The samurai regarded him with suspicion. "You aren't making any sense, Left Hand."

Gang Wu snorted. "You wouldn't understand, obviously."

He couldn't go back. There was nowhere to go but forward. He didn't want to go forward. He didn't see a way to go back.

He had to give Wutai a fighting chance. He couldn't just let some ignorant boy try and take the city by force. In eight hundred years, no-one, not even the Shinra, had managed what Tsen Li was determined to try.

The closest anyone had ever come had been when Sephiroth killed the Lady Cho. And Sephiroth hadn't managed to overthrow Godo with that.

This was a choice of lesser evils, really. How he could have been so stupid as to think that Tsen Li wouldn't be just as spoiled as Yuffie?

He issued the samurai his orders. Those orders would pass along to the other members of the samurai's unit. Eventually, the forces would need to move out.

He didn't want to do this.

But these actions were actions that, once taken, could not be undone.

There was nothing else for it. He would simply push forward.

* * *

_City of Wutai_ _--- Atop First Face's Hand_s  
_Night_

The city knelt beneath them, a young woman arranging flowers and contemplating a koan or stirring tea in the tea ceremony. The paper lanterns lit the city like stars, like materia reflected in a lake. Beautiful white, red, yellow, green all winked merrily from hundreds of feet below.

"Father," Tsen Li sighed, "Why do we insist on doing this?"

"Because it would be a shame to destroy the city, son."

In the distance, the ocean gleamed. Shining and beautiful, the lights of the stars, of the moon, reflected in it. It was dark and vast and roiling. Even from his current height, Tsen Li thought the sea seethed with something. No, not seethed. It veritably boiled. Boiled with some dark, churning energy.

He looked upon a city that dwelt by an ocean of shadow. And it was beautiful.

It really would be a shame to destroy it. But they didn't have to destroy the city.

The Palace would suffice.

"We wouldn't have to destroy the city. Our quarters are in the Palace. It would be a small thing to—"

"—Don't talk like that. I don't care what you plan, son, but don't talk about it to me."

"Father, we're in the Palace. Why are we going through such trouble to unify Wutai like this if we can do it so much easier?"

"Do you not understand the concept of 'no unnecessary bloodshed'? Is it so hard to grasp? Stop talking like this. Be patient."

"But it _is_ necessary! She's never going to marry me. She hates me. Why not just get rid of her and that doddering bag of senility and—"

"—I SAID NOT TO SPEAK LIKE THAT. And you will under no circumstances speak in such a manner of Lord Godo!"

"Why not? Why speak anything other than the truth?"

"If you have to ask, there is no point in explaining. You are too eastern." The old man sighed and mumbled, "Your mother is right. I should never have sent you to Midgar."

Tsen Li sighed too. As he always did when he was angry with his father, he slipped back into formal speech.

"She really does hate me. We should follow my plan, and then I will marry Xu Lin."

"I have created a miracle. Still, dark rivers that don't run deep. You have no blood in your veins, only thin water."

"Do you call me shallow, Father?"

"Shallow is, by nature, not deep. So yes, I call my son shallow. She loathes him, and yet she is willing to set that aside for her country. He? He schemes and plots bloodshed that he might get his way. An overgrown, over-powerful spoiled child. I am ashamed to call you my son."

"To what do you refer, Father? What do you mean, 'she is willing to set aside her loathing'? She is too selfish."

But the thing was: she wasn't too selfish. She was self-centred, yes, but Tsen Li had no right to fault her for that, being selfish himself.

She _had_ to love Wutai enough to set aside her loathing for him. She'd been willing to jump off a statue if it meant that she would become worthy to lead it. She had tried to kill him when he made her think he was a threat to Wutai. She had agreed to an arranged marriage, if that meant avoiding a civil war.

"She is still willing to marry you."

"But everything is in position. We're ready to move. I can't go back."

Mao Li merely shook his head and sighed. "Nothing I say will stop you, will it?"

"No."

It wasn't just that he couldn't go back. It was also that he didn't _want_ to go back. He'd spent so much time planning this last-ditch effort. It was an effort of last resort, but he knew Yuffie wouldn't keep her promise. She had lied to his father.

_Lied_. To Mao Li. _Lied_. To a member of the House of Shu. Such actions were unacceptable! She and her city would pay dearly.

As he stood, fully ready to issue the order, he noted once again how beautiful the Lotus was. Oh, how dearly would the Lotus pay!

_Consider my revenge taken, Kisaragi Yu Fi! How you ever thought you would get away with embarrassing me twice escapes my comprehension. But don't worry, we will rectify this mistake soon enough._

He fled from First Face's hand, his geta clicking against the stone as he moved. A river of darkness seemed to swirl around his feet as he moved.

* * *

_City of Wutai --- Go no Dojo (Dojo of the Five)  
Night_

Yuffie snapped out her right arm, performed a flick with her wrist.

Before her, twenty children imitated her.

She performed the now-necessary weight shift and kicked out even as she brought her other foot to step around.

The students imitated that, as well.

It was her only real pastime. Teaching wasn't really her strong suit, but that didn't matter. As the Second, it was her duty to train the candidates for the underground academy. How many students passed or failed would reflect on her, she knew.

So, with her newly-recognized majority, she had thrown her heart into training the candidates. She needed to get them past Level One in jujutsu, plus teach them the proper way to fall. Not to mention basic gymnastics.

"All right, everybody," she said, clapping her hands. "Let's separate into groups of two and spar."

The children separated. She formed them up in lines according to age and skill. Each pair would have a turn to spar.

Eventually.

Her youngest, least skilled students went first. Mostly, they stayed to a typical form: three feet apart, kicking completely ineffectually.

Yuffie sighed. She'd progressed past this stage over a decade earlier.

"You two! Bow and rest." She waved her third-best students to the mat. "Bow and begin."

The two students bowed and launched into a vicious flurry of activity. The younger student, Tanaka Reikoku, immediately began to move.

The two students circled each other. Reikoku struck out with her right fist, but her opponent dodged.

Then the kicks began. Neither student landed a blow on the other. They continued to circle each other, hands lashing out but meeting only empty air.

At length, Reikoku performed an intricate series of manoeuvres that ended with her on her opponent's shoulders.

"The match is over. Reikoku, dismount. Bow and quit the mat."

It felt so odd, to say those words, when she could remember so clearly Chekhov all but screaming them at her.

Reikoku and her opponent bowed, then left the mat.

Yuffie turned to the first two students. "Feel free to move around. The entire point of _defend the area not attacked_ is to _move_. Move, move, move. _Capture the mind_. Don't let your opponent predict you. Move, move, move. Ninjutsu is an ocean-like flow, a gift from Leviathan. So flow like the ocean and. . ."

"Flow like ocean, punch like mountain," her students chorused.

"Nenriki, Kenjin, bow and begin again."

The first two students moved back to the mat. They bowed, once, slightly, and began.

Just as Nenriki struck out at Kenjin, landing the first blow of the match, Yuffie heard footsteps sounding outside the dojo. The shoji door slid open.

"Second!" A voice gasped.

Yuffie turned. Standing in the doorway was Higashi Yuraku, one of the Chunin in Division Six.

Yuraku slumped, sweat dripping from her brow. Blood seeped from various wounds. "Lady Yuffie, the Palace! Tsen Li and his guard have moved on the Palace!"

Yuffie swore. "Damn that bastard! I'm going to kill him with my bare hands!"

One of the black-clad students moved.

Yuffie swivelled to face them.

Reikoku moved through the crowd effortlessly. The way she swung her feet, her steps light as Godo's, and the way she held her head told Yuffie that this was a girl who held almost as much potential as Yuffie herself had held.

If only Reikoku hadn't come from the Tanaka family, a family long opposed to Yuffie's inheritance of the Pagoda. Reikoku would probably never be as loyal as the ninja of Division Six, and for that. . .

Reikoku's right hand held the Conformer. She extended it without a word.

Yuffie took the Conformer from the girl's small hand.

"Thank you," she said.

And with that, she turned and ran from the dojo, not bothering to pick up her shoes.

* * *

Yuffie skidded to a stop in front of the Palace.

About eight samurai— and oh Leviathan, who _wore_ that kind of armour these days?— were dumping some sort of liquid all over the place. The wood of the palace, the entrance. . . Everything she could see.

The air smelled of that foul stuff Cid pumped into the Highwind.

Yuffie didn't think. She just moved. Her legs pumped against her will, carrying her across the distance separating her and the armour-clad men. Her body twisted, carrying her into a forward somersault.

Her foot connected with the helmet on one man's head. She thanked Leviathan she'd toughened up the soles of her feet.

The helm made a _ding_ sound.

Had Yuffie not been immediately launched into a vicious struggle for her very life, she would have pitched herself to the ground, laughing.

Really.

_Ding_.

But there was no time for laughter. Even as the man she'd hit fell, another man turned around, his sword swinging out in a slice designed to take her head off.

Her spine curved downwards, her palms planting firmly in the ground. She kicked up, sending herself into a somersault, making sure her feet planted themselves in the gut of the man who'd attacked her.

After that, she threw herself into a forward roll just to the side of where his right knee had been, catching his leg at the top of his calf-armour and cradling it to her chest as she went down.

He tumbled after her, and she just barely managed to get out of his way. With all that armour, he would have crushed her if he'd fallen on top of her.

She sprang back up. Two down, six to go, Leviathan only _knew _how many more inside.

Her feet automatically carried her to the left. She went to her knees and rolled backwards in a back tumble.

When she came up, she reeled her arm back, shifting her grip on the Conformer. When she let it fly, it soared straight at another man's kneecap. It caught his knee in the gap between his armour and his skin. Blood spurted bright red, even in the darkness.

The Conformer kept going, passing right through the man's leg until it struck _something_ (exactly what, Yuffie didn't see), bounced upwards, and sailed vertically, spinning downwards.

Yuffie raised her right hand. The unclassified materia she stored in her glove glowed brightly. The Conformer glowed in response. Its descent slowed, but it still headed straight for her.

She sidestepped neatly, her hand snapping out to catch it by the grip. She pulled back her arm and flung the Conformer horizontally. It caught another man in the ribs, slicing easily though the leather guards designed to protect the ties that held on his armour. It lodged in his ribcage.

Yuffie scowled and rolled to her right as a fifth man charged her, katana drawn. She kicked the back of his leg, causing him to stumble. She kicked again, and then a third time, shattering his kneecap. She lifted her right hand. The materia glowed again, and the Conformer disengaged itself from the fourth man's ribs.

It skittered across the ground towards her. A quick tap with her toe and a kick upwards had it back in her right hand and soaring out, neatly severing another man's wrist from his arm, passing straight through the wrist to strike the seventh warrior's throat guard.

She backflipped a few more times, easing herself into somersaults and sideways rolls to make sure her opponents kept their distance.

The first samurai, the one she'd hit in the head, stood up, reaching for his sword. The Conformer struck his shoulder on the return, easily slicing through the aged metal of his armour.

She caught it, performed a few forward rolls, backflips, handsprings. Anything to keep herself moving.

The shoulder strike had hit the man's _left_ arm, she realized, sighing as he removed his wakizashi from its place in the bundle on his left side.

He could wield that damned wakizashi with one hand.

She peeled her lips into a snarl and let out the kiai that Gorky had once said would rouse Da Chao. The man paused, momentarily startled.

That single moment was all she needed. She charged forward, screaming again. The steel ring in her right hand clashed with the wakizashi.

He pushed down. Being about a foot taller than she and weighing a hundred pounds more, the man had superior strength.

Yuffie smirked, letting out another kiai right in his _face_, then dropped and rolled, causing him to lose balance. She came up almost instantly, even while he pitched forward.

The Conformer cracked down on the back of his neck once. Twice. Three times, slicing through his spinal column.

She slung the Conformer into a strap on her back, surveying the damage.

Eight men dead. Her? Not a scratch.

But what about _inside_ the Palace?

And what about that smell? The smell of Airship fuel... If this stuff _was_ airship fuel, she was beyond fucked.

Her hand slipped to the PHS. The lid flicked open; her thumb tapped a sequence of buttons.

"Yuffster?" Cid's voice crackled in her ear.

"Cid, you didn't leave any Airship fuel in Wutai, did you? Because I've got people pouring something that smells like that shit on my Pagoda."

The only sound on the other end was a soft, breathy, "Oh _fuck_."

_Fuck_, Yuffie decided as she inhaled that horrible scent, _is motherfucking **right**._


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When That Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,   
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

**Chapter Nineteen**

_Da_ _Cha O --- Yuffie's Old Home_

_Night_

Vincent stared at the cage in the basement.

The slight dent he'd made in the bars a year before was gone. Someone had welded over it with a different type of steel.

_Squeak._

That was all the sound he needed— nightingale floors didn't lie.

He turned away from the cage, made his way up the steps to the first floor. He wended his way through the house, finally coming to the front door.

In the doorway stood a particularly haggard-looking Chang Sho Tzu.

"Mr. Valentine," Sho Tzu panted, "please come with me. We need your help."

"What's going on?"

Sho Tzu shook his head, breathing heavily. "Tsen Li has launched an attack on the Palace."

"What? But what of the guards?"

"Traitors or dead, all of them."

"And Yuffie? Godo?"

"I— I don't know. Yuffie wasn't in the Palace when the attack launched."

"Godo?"

"No one knows. We have no way _to_ know."

He looked away, realizing that there was no time to even think about this. He had no choice, because there was no choice to make.

So he nodded. "My weapons?"

Sho Tzu pointed to a cabinet, already crossing the room towards it. "Hidden in here."

His feet glided almost soundlessly across floors that announced his every step. His knuckles rapped against the cabinet.

A panel slid open, revealing the Death Penalty.

"Don't try to lift it."

Vincent took the Death Penalty from the panel, the rifle's weight familiar to his right arm, the grip fitting perfectly in his hand. He jammed the Death Penalty into its holster.

"Let's go."

They went.

* * *

The Palace, he realized, was on fire. He did not know this by seeing that the building was burning; he couldn't see the building burning because of smoke irritating his eyes. Instead, he tasted the air, letting the senses that Galian had improved tell him.

The scents of burning wood and airship fuel clung to the air.

That was really all he needed to know, and that was all he _could_ know, because the scents were too heavy for him to identify individuals.

_Where is Yuffie?_

The one question that ran through his mind.

_Where is Yuffie?_

He had no way of knowing. He could only hope that she hadn't so lost her senses that she'd run into a burning building.

Knowing her, she had. With no second thoughts.

_Where is Yuffie?_

Sho Tzu stared hard at the building, eyes narrowing.

"The Second will have gone in," he murmured.

And with no further comment, Sho Tzu drew his weapons— a pair of wakizashi— and headed into the Palace.

Vincent popped the snap on the Death Penalty's holster. He checked his ammunition.

And then he followed Sho Tzu.

_Where is Yuffie?_

The building was hot, so hot, and the smoke irritated his eyes even worse than it had outside.

How could anybody fight in these conditions? Why were people bothering to try? Didn't they understand that the Palace could come crashing down on their heads at any moment?

That, he supposed, was what bothered him about the situation. Not that he had gone chasing after a man he barely knew and didn't much trust into a burning building. Not that he had chased this man into a burning building for the sake of a seventeen year old girl. The blind running, the screaming, the smoke in his eyes, the heat, the constantly having to bring up the claw to stop people from bringing swords down over his head— that didn't bother him.

At least, not as much as the fact that people were trying to _fight_ like this. That they were foolish and desperate and vengeful enough to continue to fight in a hostile environment that was only growing more hostile with every passing second.

Someone tried to skewer him. He only knew because he heard the sounds of their movements, dully, over the crackling of the flames.

He blocked the attack, twisting lightly with the 'fingers' of his claw. The blade raised against him snapped. He could feel the jolt of its destruction thundering up his arm.

But where, where, WHERE was Yuffie?

He made his way through the Palace, his eyes flooding with tears because of the smoke. Thick, black stuff that choked him. Had he any true need to breathe, he would surely have fallen to his knees by now.

How did they stand it? He had thought himself a monster, but his bloodlust had never been so great as to drive him to such misery and destruction as this. Perhaps that was the self-serving side of his monstrous nature...

Or perhaps bloodlust was part of human nature.

Distantly, he heard people coughing. It wasn't half as loud as his false, hideous heartbeat in his ears. It wasn't half as loud as the crackling of the flames, as the creaking of the wood.

Creaking wood.

Automatically, his eyes widened, unleashing his tears and helping the smoke irritate him even more.

Creaking wood. Burning building. Unstable building. Creaking wood.

Every attack, every shout, every footstep was weakening the Palace. And weakening the Palace would result in—

* * *

Yuffie stopped running, her chest heaving up and down, up and down.

She couldn't seem to breathe.

Around her, the Palace burned. Smoke choked her, irritated her eyes.

Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea.

She hoped to Leviathan that the man she'd just skewered hadn't been one of her own.

But how could she just leave her _father_ in a burning building? Sure, she didn't always get along with him. But he was still her father, and fucked up as he was, fucked up as their relationship was, she still loved him.

She had to find him. She had to get him out of here. She _had_ to. Wutai still needed him.

Wutai just wasn't ready for her rule.

"Dad!" She cried, then bent over, coughing.

_Damn Tsen Li! Damn South Wutai!_

She could have put her fist through a wall in frustration if she hadn't been so out of breath.

...And if she didn't care if the Palace crashed down on her head.

Where was he?

Hell, where was _she_?

Funny, how she'd lost her way now that she couldn't see where she was. She'd thought she'd known this place as well as she'd known herself.

She must not have known herself very well.

She finally managed to get a clear breath.

She got down on her hands and knees, crawling through the burning passageways. With her face almost impossibly low to the ground, she got more clean air.

Okay, maybe if she just kept heading in _that_ direction...

She found her way to the Throne Room.

Odd, the floor was colder here. The air was easier to breathe.

What was going on?

And then she realised. Things weren't burning here.

_What the?_

She moved into the Throne Room. And now everything made sense.

In the centre of the Throne Room stood Tsen Li and Godo.

* * *

"Damn you," Cid pounded a first against the airship's console. "Damn you, answer me! Wutai, answer!"

But there was nothing. He tried channel after channel, but all he saw in the distance was smoke, and all he heard in his headset was static.

"Do we have any idea what's happening on the ground?" Cloud asked.

Cid shook his head and swore. Violently. Again. "Not a fuckin' clue, Cloud. Last we heard from anybody in Wutai was when Yuffie asked if I'd left airship fuel in Wutai. They were dumping it on the Palace."

Cloud looked to the horizon.

In the distance, they saw massive plumes of black smoke. Black smoke, thick and heavy, like some sort of poisonous fog or cloud, like currents of black water swimming through the sky.

"Son of a bitch," Cid breathed.

"So they've set fire to it." From the way Cloud sounded, Cid wasn't sure if he was asking a question or making a statement. "Think we can crash the airship through the city gates?"

Cid didn't even blink before replying, "Think I can slam your head through that console?"

"Was that a yes?"

"That was a fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, goddamnit NO." He added a few more instances of _fuck_ for good measure. "Tifa could break those damn gates down with a Final Heaven."

"Good point."

It was then that Tifa and Reeve (who was carrying Cait Sith in his arms with the giant Moogle walking behind him) rushed into the cockpit.

"Cloud! There's—"

"I know. Cid, grab the Gospel. Tifa, do you have the Premium Heart?"

Tifa nodded, even as Cid retrieved the Gospel from a corner of the cockpit.

Reeve did something to the back of the Moogle, retrieving Cait's megaphone and a very large gun.

They headed down to the stables, saddling Chocobos and lowering the ramp.

"Let's mosey," Cloud said.

"Damn you," Cid replied.

And then they were off, racing to get to Wutai. The monsters couldn't catch them; the Chocobos were moving so fast it was more like flying (flying, flying, flying) slowly.

And then they were there, no idea how long it had taken, right outside a city with closed gates and a Pagoda that was on fire.

"Tifa?" Cloud asked.

Cid blinked at the grim look on Tifa's face.

Moments later, they had the gates in shambles. The city was open, defenceless.

Goddamnit, Cid thought as he raced through the dirt streets so near the entrance. He nearly lost his footing when the dirt changed to dusty cobblestone.

The spear was becoming a heavier weight in his arms by the minute. Would his arms be jelly by the time they reached the Pagoda?

Would he get a hold of his fuckin' _head_ and maybe do something productive, like _run_?

The Pagoda was burning down, he realized. Bits of it were already falling off. Smoke, heat, nothing but goddamn _fire_ in half the places he could see.

The smoke stung his eyes, and with his left hand, he pulled down his goggles.

He'd always known he'd need 'em.

Cloud looked to Tifa and Reeve, he could see that.

"Reeve, you know what Yuffie's people will be wearing?"

"I've got an idea, yeah."

"Good. Shoot anybody who comes out of there and doesn't belong to Yuffie or us, got it?"

Cid grinned, running his left hand through the stubble on his jaw. Kid was finally showing a bit of sense.

Reeve seemed to disagree. "Cloud?"

"And you wouldn't happen to have a sidearm, would you?"

Cid looked over. "Give 'im the damn sidearm, Cat. I know you got it. The sonuvabitch gave up the damn Ultima Weapon."

"Shut up, Cid."

Reeve handed over a sidearm. "It's a nine millimetre."

Apparently, ankle length coats were good for hiding shit like that. Cid made a mental note to never try and take Reeve out.

Not that he would have wanted to, anyway.

"You have extra ammunition?"

Reeve pulled a box from a pouch and said, "The magazine holds eight rounds; the box has twenty-four cartridges. The magazine's already full, but be careful, okay?"

Cloud nodded, tucking the box of ammunition into a pocket somewhere (was that safe? Cid wondered). The gun looked alien in his hands.

He realized then that he really didn't like seeing Spike with a gun. It was almost as bad as seeing the brat with one would be.

Cloud slid the safety off and pulled the slide. "Ready?"

"Are you fuckin' kiddin'? We ain't—"

"Let's go."

Cloud moved in, head down, barrel of the gun pointing up. Tifa, being Tifa, followed.

And Cid sighed, realizing he had no choice.

"Hold my cigs," he said, tossing the little carton at Reeve. It hit Reeve square in the chest. After a moment, his assortment of matches and lighters followed.

And then he followed Cloud and Tifa into the Palace.


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

**Claimer: **I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

**And When that Day Comes**

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars  
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing  
They get a kick out of my misery.  
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,  
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,   
I pray for the day when my ship comes in  
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—_Insomniac_, Straight No Chaser

(xx)

Yuffie stared as her father and her fiancée circled each other.

This building could easily come crashing onto their heads at any minute. Didn't they CARE? Did they even notice?

Her father struck out. His hand connected with Tsen Li's face.

From however far away she was, she could hear Godo's knuckles cracking against Tsen Li's cheekbone. The cracking sound as Godo's fist shattered Tsen Li's face was audible over the fire.

Tsen Li stumbled backwards. But within moments, he was moving towards Godo.

Godo moved away, dropping into a crouch. He rolled away from Tsen Li even as Tsen Li tried to hit him again. Tsen Li continued to try to strike him, and Godo just kept rolling away.

Flow like ocean, strike like mountain.

Her father was moving like a fluid— moving like a ninja. There was no way Tsen Li would hit him and actually do damage.

And that was when she saw it. Tsen Li bowed. He bowed, and then he screamed the two words she'd never thought she would hear again.

"OMNI CHANGE!"

She watched the transformation take place, almost... fascinated? It started with his legs. They grew bulkier. His feet began to curl in on themselves. Hardening, the toes merging together, until he had hooves. His hair lengthened until it was past his shoulders.

He screamed when his eyes literally melted into his face. No, not melted. More like his brain or something had just sucked them right up— schloop!— and back into his head.

He screamed even louder as something happened behind that mask of rapidly-darkening flesh. She could hear the grinding of his bones rearranging. And then his eyeballs popped back out.

There were six of them. Six solid black eyes. There was no white or brown or ANYTHING but black anywhere in those eyeballs.

Six black horns sprouted from his head. Four of them spiralled and twisted around his head like some sort of sick crown, but two of them shot up out of the sides of his head and twisted forward, like the horns of a bull.

Standing before her, she understood, was the Omni Change of Le Phe Tan.

So why did he look like Da Chao? That brown-red skin, the six eyes— it was Da Chao.

"Daddy!" She screamed, using a name she hadn't used in earnest since she was a child. And she'd left childhood a good long time ago. "Daddy, stay back! You don't have the Omni Change anymore!"

And Godo stood down. He turned to her, looked at her.

She knew what she had to do.

She bowed, too.

Within moments, she felt nothing but pain. Her hands hurt, her skin was, like, falling off or something. It hurt so horribly.

Had Godo felt this every time he changed? She understood why he was such a goddamn prune, now.

Her body seemed to balance perfectly. How was it possible, with this body that wasn't the same as it had been five minutes ago? How did she know how to stand?

But Tsen Li (Da Chao, some part of her whispered, the part of her that told her that the claws on the ends of her hands were useful) was moving towards her. Running, full speed, meaty hands clenched into fists.

Flow like ocean, strike like mountain some distant part of her thought as she slid to the side, easily evading his attack, and circled around behind him.

Snorting angrily, he turned.

She wasted no time. Within seconds, the world was reduced to six black eyes and fists the size of chickens. The claws that were now on her hands were incredibly useful— she felt a deep sense of satisfaction when she saw blood slide down his cheek.

He kicked out.

She sprang backwards, somersaulting easily. She kept somersaulting until she was out of his way, even as he began to charge her. Cartwheels and backflips and ground-hugging rolls. She led him on a merry chase through that tiny, tiny room.

She'd beaten him down before, so many times before, just in the past few days. Broken his rips, broken the cartilage AND the bone in his nose, nearly concussed him. Kicked his ass from there to Gold Saucer.

Funny, how being a gigantic bull-snake-spider-human thing made him a bit tougher.

She snarled at him, feeling her lips peel back to reveal wickedly sharp fangs. There was something odd about her jaw, too.

Was it... mobile? Really really mobile?

She paid it no mind. Time to shitbeat Tsen Li (Da Chao, her body insisted, though it agreed on the shitbeating). Her fist slammed into his jaw. As she connected, her wrist flicked, scraping her claws against him and gouging her fingers deep into his face.

Her hand came away bloody.

She licked the blood away with a forked tongue.

"Bitch," Tsen Li growled. "You're just like your father— the easterners' bitch."

"And you're a traitor!" She replied.

Oddly enough, there was no speech impediment. Her fangs were small enough they didn't interfere, and apparently, this body knew how to manage with a forked tongue.

What was going on? How did she know how to control this body? Why wasn't it just a pile of muscle and flesh? Why wasn't she tripping over her own feet?

Tsen Li screamed something. The kiai knocked her backwards, startled her for an instant. Just long enough for him to start moving towards her. Not long enough to save him.

She rushed him, letting loose her own kiai.

hr

Vincent heard two shouts. How he managed to hear them above the burning of the building, he didn't want to know.

He didn't want to think about the chances of something human screaming that loud.

But at least he knew where she was, now.

He moved through the halls, ignoring the insanity of the situation. He was running into a burning building.

On the other hand, he'd jumped out of an airship to save an idiot teenaged girl... Why not do this as well?

He made his way to the room where he'd heard the sound.

Something collided with the door from the other side. Vincent blinked, stepping back automatically as the something went through the shoji door.

He felt his breath leave him when he realized what it was. It was a human body. Corpse? The body landed on the floor with a thud, flopping perhaps once. It landed on its back, and Vincent felt his eyes widen, then narrow.

Godo looked up at him. There was no surprise on the man's face, only a determined expression that reminded him of an expression he had so recently seen Yuffie wearing.

Vincent noted the gaping hole in the man's stomach. His enhanced night vision could pick out claw marks.

Again, he heard two screams. One of them male, the other female. One triumphant, the other distraught.

Yuffie!

He ripped what remained of the door from its hinges to find—

Two creatures. Circling each other.

One of them looked like the Minotaur of legend... But with six eyes and with six horns. The other looked like a young woman. With claws and unbelievably pale skin.

The female figure half-turned, staring at him for a moment.

It, too, was six-eyed. It appeared to have some sort of whiskers or something, like a dragon.

Beautifully shaped pink lips parted, revealing wicked fangs and a forked tongue.

His breath caught in his throat.

Yuffie and Tsen Li?

Were these creatures the heirs of Wutai?

The female figure began to scream. Something changed, something went wrong.

She began to grow taller... Her skin began to darken. Moments later, Yuffie stood before him, her clothing ripped, her hair still long, now unbound.

"I— I can't—" She gasped. "I can't— _I won't— I won't let you live_!"

Vincent stared at her.

One hand swept out...

The shuriken embedded in the far wall began to move.

Within moments, it was whistling through the air, only to land in her hand. She half-turned, the shuriken extended.

Tsen Li tried to move backwards.

Vincent nodded to himself, already moving to the side. He took as careful aim as time allowed, squeezing the trigger only when he was sure.

The bullet struck Tsen Li in the shoulder, entering at an angle. Tsen Li, who had been back-pedalling, was now moving directly into Yuffie's swing.

The Conformer's blade connected with Tsen Li's throat.

Yuffie completed her turn, the sharp metal slicing easily through Tsen Li's neck.

Watching, Vincent found himself wondering if she'd had any difficulty in breaking through the spinal cord.

Yuffie kissed the Conformer, falling to her knees. A red glow surrounded her.

Suddenly, he could hear the roaring of the ocean. His breath began to produce steam in the air.

Was she calling Leviathan _and_ Shiva?

He looked up, towards her.

There— a blue figure, barely visible. And beside it, a golden one.

Leviathan... And who? Surely not Shiva. Shiva wasn't gold.

"Leviathan-Father, Ashura-Mother." Yuffie breathed.

He listened as the sound of the fire began to dim. Soon, he could hear the rain. Where the rain didn't put out the fire, ice sprang to do the job.

"Thank you," Yuffie murmured. "Thank you."

She turned to face him. Upon seeing him, she went a little pale. But then she shook her head and told him, frankly: "I need to see what they've done. I need to find out who started this."

He nodded.

She would get her wish. He would see to that himself.

TBC 11 FEBRUARY 2006.

WOOT, JUST THE EPILOGUE LEFT.


	22. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_Day 1_

In the light of day, swathed in a voluminous kimono and standing against the backdrop of the River Leviathan and Da Chao-statue, he looked tiny. The contrast of hard gold-brown stone with red and white silk, a rich blue sky with an aged brown face, only served ton enhance the picture. He looked almost like a child. Thin, stick-like. Harmless.

It had been his samurai, his son, his letter.

All of this was his fault.

She wanted to strangle him. She wanted to grab that damn bundle of sticks and shake him and shake him until she could hear the bits of straw rattling. She wanted to snap him in half, snap that absurd little straw doll in half and watch all the chaff fall out.

Yuffie inclined her head. "Lord Shu."

He sighed heavily. "I am sorry for your loss."

Lie. He wasn't sorry. He hadn't cared about Godo. He'd wanted her throne for his son. He'd wanted Godo's kingdom for his own.

He didn't care about her, he didn't care about her country, he didn't care, he didn't care.

"And I'm sorry for yours."

Lie. She wasn't sorry she'd killed Tsen Li. He had been a threat to her country. She was glad he was dead.

Why were they bothering with this? Why were they standing in a city his son had tried to destroy and pretending that neither of them wanted the other to rot in a torture chamber?

"I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive this old man... I must admit that I am at fault."

Oh, she knew that. She knew that full well.

"I... I knew of my son's plan."

Yuffie felt the blood rush to her face. _That_, she hadn't known. _That_, she would kill him for.

"You— you _knew_! And you didn't _warn_ us? That's— that's!"

Horrifying. Insane. Dishonourable. Tantamount to an act of war.

"That's war! That's an act of war! You had a moral and legal obligation to warn us, and you deliberately neglected it!"

At her abandonment of typical Wutaian couched-speech, Mao Li's face went practically _purple_. Great. So they were _both_ pissed as hell at each other.

"What else could I have done? I am willing to accept full responsibility for my inaction, but I could have done nothing to change it."

He had a point, but she couldn't concede it. "That's a lie. You're the samurai. You tell me what you could have done."

"And what would my running have accomplished? There was no way to warn you in time... Running would merely have endangered my health."

"I find that running downhill is easier than walking uphill. You could have warned us. What the hell is the PHS system for, if not calling in an emergency?"

He looked down.

"Unless you wanted your son to succeed? This is your out, isn't it? You can say 'I had no way to stop it I had no way to warn you'. Like that's supposed to exonerate you." She snarled at him. "Being old is no excuse. You could have done _something_."

He stared at her, that same steady stare Vincent had given her. But this was different. Vincent's stares had always made her feel a little ashamed, possibly even afraid. Mao Li's gaze, however, had no effect.

"If that is the case, what course of action do you have? I can—"

"—Nooo, no you can't. Whatever you're thinking about, _you can't_. This is Da Cha O, not Le Phe Tan, and I will beat your ass from here to Junon if you try."

Mao Li stiffened. "I see. In that case, I demand my right to an honourable death."

"Give me your katana. I will be happy to comply."

"Right here? Right now?"

"Here and now. You want your honourable death, you're getting it here."

He unsheathed his katana, giving it to her by the hilt.

She accepted it in both hands. "When?"

"No... This is not the way." His hand reached out, touching the hilt.

She laughed. "Let me guess. You want to write your death poem and wrap the wakizashi in paper?"

"That is my right."

"Fine. Dawn tomorrow. On this bridge."

The katana passed back into his hands. She could wait a day, even if he didn't deserve an honourable death.

_Day 2_

Dawn came entirely too early. But she was there, and she was appropriately dressed, and Mao Li was writing his death poem.

If it was haiku, she was going to laugh. Hard.

Insanely hard.

Except haiku was a perfectly acceptable form, though she personally would have chosen tanka. Five, seven, five, seven, seven. It was usually filled with emotion. A single, passionate line.

She took the slip of paper from him, noting that it was, in fact, a tanka.

She read it and didn't laugh. Instead, she handed it off to Sho Tzu and unsheathed the katana.

Mao Li looked up at her, sighing.

She took up her position behind him. "When?"

"Let me bleed."

She nodded.

The yukata fell open. His wakizashi plunged into his flesh. A quick jerk, left to right, and up.

Cutting straight through a neck was hard enough, but it was considered poor form to completely sever the head from the body, which was even harder. She was supposed to use a special cut, leaving a slight flap of skin instead of completely beheading him.

Yuffie waited a moment, watching him bleed.

Mao Li inclined his head.

She swung.

* * *

Vincent stood on the other side of the river, watching. It wasn't as close as he was allowed to go, but he didn't want to be too close. 

If he got close, he would have no opportunity to scan the crowds for threats. If he got close, he would have to remember the uncle who had lifted him to his shoulders, the uncle who had prepared him for his meeting with the go-between, the uncle who had played Go with him.

Was this aged, treacherous serpent the man he had grown up knowing, admiring, loving?

He wasn't sure. He couldn't be sure. Yuffie was even now destroying his only remaining means of knowing: no one would speak ill of the dead, if there was ill to speak.

All except for one— a non-Wutaian man, according to dress, hair and skin colour. He stood in a crowd of Wutaian women.

The man's gaze was fixed on a single point. Vincent followed that line. His fingers tightened their grip on the Death Penalty.

That intense stare was unnatural. Something in his gut coiled and tightened.

Was this how Godo had felt? Had Godo seen something predatory in the way he had looked at Yuffie, something ill?

On the bridge, Yuffie swung the katana.

Barely conscious of it, Vincent held his breath, hoping that it would be quick. Clean. Proper.

It was. No flying head, no flying katana, no complete decapitation.

Just a quick, clean stroke.

She did well. It was... It was a relief.

He turned back to the man who had been staring.

He was still staring. Something... salacious in that gaze, something sick, something _wrong_.

* * *

Cid stared at the man sitting in front of Yuffie. He was tall, dressed in dark colours. The man looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place him. 

He looked back to Yuffie. Her head was high in the air, impossibly high. Her expression was even.

He'd never thought the twerp could be so damn dignified. He was starting to see what that Sho Tzu guy saw in her. He was starting to see that the kid _could_ lead.

Yuffie, leading a country? A year ago, he'd have scoffed at the thought. Now, though... He wasn't so sure he'd been right about her. She was stronger than anybody had given her credit for.

The man bowed his head. "Second, I have come to confess."

She gritted her teeth. "Do it quick."

"Since the Shinra War, my goal has been to unify our nation. I thought that only then could it be strong. In my fervour, I schemed against you. Against us all."

Something about Yuffie's expression changed, but only for a moment. That brief flash across her face could have been anything from anger, to nausea, to hurt.

"I am the one who sent the letter and the photographs to Shu Mao Li. I am the one who commanded the traitorous guard. I am the one who aided Shu Tsen Li's samurai in breaching the palace."

Yuffie stood. Her face flushed, her jaw clenched, her hands curled themselves into fists. She made several gestures, opened and clothed her mouth several times.

And then she gave up.

"I want you _dead_," she hissed. "Do you understand that? I want you _dead_. _You_ killed my father. You _killed_ my _father_! You nearly destroyed the palace! You— all of this is _your_ fault!"

"Little Lady," one of the ninja started forward, but Yuffie swung out her hand.

Cid watched the scene, wishing for a cigarette. He was fucking glad she wasn't looking at him with that look. Really fucking glad.

"What about a trial?" Gang Wu asked. "The other nations would look down on us if we didn't have a trial."

She stalked towards him, that ridiculous-looking kimono swaying as she moved. She bent down, got in the man's face. "You want a trial, Gang Wu? You'll get a trial. But first I'll fucking _kill_ you."

"Little Lady!" The ninja moved forward again.

"Sho Tzu, stay back!" She didn't even look away from Gang Wu.

Sho Tzu ignored her. Instead, he moved towards Yuffie, finally clasping his hand on her shoulder. "Second, you can't just kill him! As a chunin, he has a right to a trial!"

Cid couldn't help noticing that Sho Tzu didn't say 'fair'. Did the traitorous bastard deserve one? He'd dumped airship fuel all over the Palace and lit it on fire.

That fire had spread to the city walls. The only thing that saved the town had been the sudden storm. But... Rain and snow in the middle of summer? He rather figured that Leviathan had something to do with it.

"A tribunal," Gang Wu said. "It would be a sham."

Yuffie glared. "Yeah, well, it's the best you're going to get. Everyone in this room heard your confession. It's not like there's any point in trying you, anyway."

"She has a point," one of the other ninja added. This one was short, slender. Female, if the breasts were any indication. "What do you hope to accomplish?"

But Cid knew: publicity. If he could get enough people aware of his situation, he might find people who would side with him.

Fuckin' politics. This was just another reason Cid hated politicians. It looked like the brat was one of the only good ones.

"Politics," Cid told them. " 's fuckin' POLITICS, twerp."

Sho Tzu glared at him. "How dare you speak to—"

"—Shut up, Aoshi. That asshole cancer factory's a friend of mine. Let him talk how he wants."

Cid was now officially confused. Was the man's name Sho Tzu or Aoshi? Was Sho Tzu some sort of fucked-up nickname?

The man's voice turned gentle. "It's Sho Tzu, now, little Lady."

Whatever. He'd let 'cancer factory' slide. For now. "Damn straight, kid, and if nobody else sees what that idiot is tryin' to pull, then I'm the only friend you _got_ in here!"

"Not the only friend," Vincent murmured from right behind Cid's left ear.

Cid jumped, swearing. "Christ! God damn it, Valentine, the fuck're you _do_in'! Scare the FUCK outta me, why don't ya!"

"I apologize. I did not mean to startle you."

"Cid, watch the mouth. I don't need you fucking up Shake's language." Yuffie blinked, and then started to laugh. "I'm a goddamn hypocrite, huh?"

"Politics," the woman ninja muttered. "Politics... What have politics got to do with it?"

A third spoke up. "Now is not the time, Yuraku. If he wants a trial, he may have a trial. Second, if you would?"

Yuffie nodded, once. "Say something, Gang Wu. Just... just tell me why."

Gang Wu closed his eyes, bowed his head. "I thought you could not rule a unified Wutai— I thought you could not rule at all. I was in error."

Yuffie's face hardened. "Chang Sho Tzu, Nishi Ichiro. I remand the traitor into your custody."

And it was over, just like that. Sho Tzu and the third ninja lifted up Gang Wu by his shoulders, taking him heavily from the room.

Cid bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Two short Wutaian men herding out a very tall Wutaian man, all of them looking angry as fuck.

For whatever reason, he just found it funny.

_Day 3_

Yuffie stood on the Bridge of Heaven, looking into the river. It would be thirty-three days before she could bury her father. Thirty-three days.

And until then, he would lie, wrapped, in the preparation room in the cemetery. Her gaze automatically went downstream, to the cemetery building.

In a little over a month, she would be storing both her parents in there. To float forever in an air-tight coffin, drifting and bobbing along the surface of an indoor lake.

Both of her parents. Both.

No more laughing with her father. No more arguments. No more fistfights. No more late-night games of Go, no more salting his tea, no more confessing their hopes for their country. No more tight hugs, no more of him surprising her by putting flowers in her obi, no more repairing his geta just because she could.

The tears came again, and she couldn't seem to stop them. It was like a river, like a flood, like all of her weaknesses pouring out.

She turned away, looking up, and nearly walked into Vincent. She would have walked into him, in fact, if he hadn't moved to the side.

"Yuffie."

She smiled at him, but it wasn't a good smile. It was a fake smile.

But it was what he needed to see, right? She needed to be cheerful for her country, for her friends.

Right?

"I am... sorry." His voice was deep, heavy, beautiful. "It is hard, to lose one you love. You should not have had to face it so early."

She shook her head. "If not now, then when would he have died, huh? A year from now? Two years? Five, at the most."

"Perhaps ten." Vincent gave her a crooked smile. "Perhaps, had Tsen Li not killed him, he would have lived forever. Too crazy to die."

She laughed. "I thought that was me."

He shook his head, but his smile straightened out. It was tiny thing, but it was beautiful and perfect. "No."

She moved towards him. Almost surprisingly, he didn't move away.

They were too close, too close. In public. Her reputation—

It was shit, anyway.

She didn't actually _fling_ herself at him. It wasn't a throwing sort of thing, no. She just moved close to him, looking up at him.

"You sure? I'm pretty crazy."

"I'm sure."

She brought her hand up, until it rested flat on his shirt.

He looked down at her, totally serious. He didn't move away, just watched her.

She rested her head on his chest.

His right hand came up. It lingered along the back of her head.

"I am sorry," he murmured to the top of her head.

"It's not your fault." She looked up.

Their faces were so close again. And sure, it was in public, but what could it hurt, really?

She stood on her tiptoes, one hand sliding to his cheek. Not just letting him know what she wanted, but also because she just wanted to touch him.

He bent towards her. His grip on the back of her head tightened.

Their lips met.

It was perfect.

This time, he was the one who opened their mouth first. She opened her mouth for him, and soon his tongue was thrusting between her lips.

His right hand slid from her head. It teased along her neck, down her spine, until he was gripping her waist.

Both of her arms found their way around his neck. One hand slipped into his hair— that short, soft hair.

She could feel the heat of his body through her clothes.

He broke the kiss, suddenly gasping for breath.

She loosed her grip on him, though she dug her hands into his shoulders, to keep her balance.

He moved out of her grasp. "Yuffie— I—"

She shook her head. "Don't apologize."

But he apologized anyway. And then he was gone, leaving her alone with the river.

* * *

EL FIN

Completed Sunday,19 February, 2006.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

No, this is the end.

Really.

Of this fic, anyway.


End file.
